Columbia Library Columns VOLUME XLIl NOVEMBER 1992 NUMBER i

CONTENTS

Kenneth A. Lohf: Collecting for Columbia DALLAS PRATT ?

The Play's the Thing CAROL Z . ROTHKOPF 11

Instructing Women: Conduct Books in the PALRif::L\ A. CAHILL 21

Plimpton Library

Our Growiny; Collections KF.NNETH A. LOHF 3 5

Activities of the Friends 46

Contributors to This Issue

Published by T H E F R I E N D S O F T H E C O L U M B I A L I B R A R I E S

Butler Library, Columbia Universi ty N e w York, N Y 10027

Three issues a year

• #

Kenneth A. Lohf in the Rare Book and (Manuscript Library (Photograph by Joe Pineiro)

Kenneth A. Lohf Collecting for Columbia

DALLAS PRATT

The telephone rang in the University's Rare Book and Man­uscript Library. "A call from President Kirk," the secretary said. It was the mid-1960s, and Kenneth Lohf wondered if

there was any trouble as he picked up the phone. "Oh, Lohf," said Grayson Kirk m a perfectly calm voice, "I'm on to something which might interest you. Last night I dined with Bennett Cerf He and his partner Donald Klopfer at Random House are looking for somewhere to bestow all their papers. He thought we might be interested. You might follow this up." All their papers! A house which had published W. H. Auden, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, Gertrude Stein, and many other "greats" from the 1920s to the present day.

Ken followed up at once with a phone call to Random House. Nothing happened, however, immediately; in fact, nothing hap­pened for four years. At last another telephone call, this time from Random House: "Will you come down and see what we have that's worth preserving?" Ken went down to their offices in the Villard mansion on Madison Avenue, was led through cavernous cellars and the boiler room by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, and emerged finally into a dark storeroom filled with scores of file cabi­nets arranged around the damp walls. The contents of several drawers were spilling onto the cement floor. How much was actu­ally left in the files, the librarian wondered? Ken noticed the "St" file, walked over and opened it as a test, and there he feasted his eyes on a mass of Gertrude Stein folders containing hundreds of original letters and manuscripts and thousands of related items document­ing her publishing career at Random House. The librarian felt both

I his article will LIISO appear as the introduction to the catalogue entitled: Tbi; Lohf Years:

An Exhibition ofSdmed Rare Booh and Manuscripts Acquired by the Rare Book and Manu­

script Library. 1967-1992, While Kenneth A. Lohf Served as Its Librarian.

4 Dallas Pratt

relieved and tremendously excited. Ken related this story to me at the beginning of my interview with him last summer.

"Acquiring this magnificent research resource for Columbia was one of the greatest thrills of my career as a librarian," said Ken. One of the treasures, a Eugene O'Neill manuscript of the introductions to his collected plays, is described under item 72. (Subsequent items mentioned in this introduction will be identified by the item num­ber in parentheses.) "What were some of the other 'thrills' in your quarter century as Columbia's Librarian for Rare Books and Manu­scripts?" I asked, half-apologizing for associating thrills with the activities of Ken, a distinguished librarian, author of five full-length bibliographies, published poet, and formidable expert on manu­script and printed texts and on the book arts. "Oh, but there were lots of those in my career," he said. "Imagine being summoned to Tallahassee by Governor Reuben Askew of Florida to receive, at an open session of the state legislature, the contents of Cora Crane's safe deposit box which hadn't been opened since early in the cen­tury, and finding in it a wealth of documents relating both to Cora's and Stephen Crane's family, the pen with which Stephen wrote sev­eral of his novels, and Cora's riding-crop!"

With much pleasure and satisfaction Ken also recalled a more recent lunch at the Players' Club on Gramercy Park with Robert Giroux of Farrar, Straus & Giroux; as lunch was drawing to a close, his host said, "By the way, there's a shopping bag for you in the cloakroom as you leave," and in it Ken found the hefty manuscript, some six inches thick, of Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Moun­tain (89) which Bob Giroux was presenting as a gift to the Merton Collection. The mention of Merton's name led me to ask, "I recall an outstanding Merton exhibition which you mounted in the Library in 1989. Was that mosdy Columbia-owned?" "Oh, yes, we have a deeply felt commitment to Columbia authors, and of course Merton was among our most distinguished alumni. We were told by the Catholic chaplain at the University of the large collection of Merton manuscripts stored in the basement of the Notre Dame Church just a block from Butler Library. Since Father Merton had

Kenneth A. Lohf Colleaingfor Columbia 5

already written to me and had given a number of his manuscripts to the Library, we began negotiations posthaste that happily resulted in the large treasure trove being added to our Merton Collection."

Another group of Columbia authors whose books and manu­scripts the Library acquired was the "Beats." "They all either went to Columbia College, as Allen Ginsberg (94) and Jack Kerouac (92) did, or lived in the Morningside Heights area," Ken explained. "The student riots in 1968 marked the genesis of the Library's interest in this group of Columbia authors. Ginsberg's poem 'Howl' was a student icon, and he was often on the campus to speak or to give readings of his poems, and at one point he and Kerouac's biographer, Ann Charters, found my office on the eighth floor of Butler, high above the riot's turmoil, a convenient refuge for a meet­ing and interview. It was at one of these meetings that Allen and I began to talk about the depositing of his papers and library with us. For the sake of protection and future use of his literary archive, Allen readily agreed. Our brief talk and the rapid meeting of minds, seconded by Professors Barzun, Trilling, and Van Doren, resulted in the formation of the 'Beat' collection, now grown to be the most significant such literary archive of the movement in existence."

I was intrigued by the impressive and rapid growth in the collec­tions and pursued that topic in our interview. ' 'Ken, it seems you've been quite innovative in acquiring works in the realm of 'popular culture.' I note in the catalogue Paul R. Palmer's gift of a collection of 1,300 movie stills from the silent screen era to the present (76). Then, there is the manuscript and inscribed first edition of the first Ellery Queen novel, The Roman Hat Mystery (81), the gift of Richard and Douglas Dannay and Patricia Lee Caldwell. I saw these in a large exhibition of Columbia's mystery writer's material. Still another recent exhibition featured Nancy Saxon's gift of numerous delightful drawings by her late husband Charles for New Yorker cov­ers and cartoons (101)." "Not only do these collections of popular culture mirror the social conventions of our age, but they also stim­ulate student interest," Ken explained. "But as an example of large attendance, certainly not confined to students nor related to popu-

6 Dallas Pratt

lar culture, I should mention the exhibition held earlier this year, 'Jewish Literature Through the Ages,' drawn from a collection of more than one thousand manuscripts rarely exhibited but fre­quently used by scholars in our reading room." This exhibition is represented in the catalogue by a cuneiform tablet from the time of Abraham, which confirms the existence of some of the cities men­tioned in the Book of Genesis (1). This important tablet was pre­sented by Frances Henne, who was also the generous donor of over eight hundred children's books published in color by the McLoughlin Brothers in the nineteenth century (46).

"In the setting of the new Rare Book and Manuscript Library, opened in 1984," I noted, "the appearance of these exhibitions has created more interest and outshone all previous ones. How did this new construction come to pass?'' It was obvious to all of us who had used the collections that the old quarters were cramped and could no longer accommodate the rapidly growing collections or the increasing number of students and researchers who were coming to use them. During Ken's tenure, the rare book collections have dou­bled in size to a half million volumes, and manuscript and archival collections have grown from three and one-half to twenty-six mil­lion items; there are also some 130,000 drawings, photographs, and memorabilia in the collections. Ken explained the process of build­ing the new library: "The Rare Book and Manuscript Library was the last of Columbia's distinctive collections that needed modern premises to improve its operations, so I approached the University Librarian at that time, Patricia Battin, and received from her per­mission to draft a proposal for new quarters to present to the budget and space committees. She forwarded the proposal to them, and they approved and sent the proposal to the Board of Trustees, which also gave the project the green light with the proviso that we raise the necessary funds for the entire project." So, Ken began the mam­moth task of raising the three million dollars needed to construct the new quarters from the truly inspired designs by Byron Bell, part­ner in the architectural firm of Cain, Farrell & Bell. Many Friends of the Libraries and other donors contributed generously, the Friends

Kenneth A. Lohf Collecting for Columbia 7

as a group specifically endowing the Donors Room, with fine per­iod furnishings donated by the 'Viscountess Eccles. However, the major supporters were those after whom the other four units were

Lohl was inslrtimcnial in the building of the new Rare Book anti Manuscript Library, which opened December 1984; the Alan and Margaret Kempner

Exhibition Room added an important new facilit\-.

named: Alan and Margaret Kempner, the exhibition room; Corliss Lamont, the rare book reading room; Mrs. George D. Woods, the manuscript reading room; and Ruth Ullman Samuel, the reference center.

8 Dallas Pratt

On a visit to the new Library one is struck immediately by the spacious exhibition area, beautifully decorated in soft colors, the beamed and glass ceiling through which one can glimpse the sky, and the reading rooms with glass walls. I wondered what else one could wish for, and I asked Ken. "Oh, yes," he responded with a smile, "we do still need a great deal, especially a very necessary increase in the endowments of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and endowments as well for the positions of its librarians to secure the Library's future as a research center in a major university.''

I then asked, "You've told me the story of your library and of some of its collections and their donors, but what about the librar­ian himself?" "To begin at the beginning," answered Ken, "I was a midwesterner, born in Milwaukee in 1925. As soon as I finished high school I was swept into the vortex of World War II: Officers Training Corps in the Air Force at Amherst and Yale, then overseas to Chittagongin India near the Burmese border as a first lieutenant. I was assigned to the instrument landing service, so vital because of our air supply routes over the Himalayas to western China. In this unlikely jungle setting with its monsoons and unbearable humidity and heat I started to write poetry, and after the war in the early 1950s my work began to appear in poetry magazines."

Ken's first book, a collection of thirty poems, XXX for Time, appeared in 1966, and five additional volumes. Arrivals, Seasons, Fictions, Passages, and Places, were published in the 1980s and 1990s. Demobilized from the Air Force in 1946, he enrolled in Northwestern University, majoring in English literature, and after graduating went to Columbia with the intention of becoming a col­lege teacher. He earned his master's degree in 1950, with a thesis entitled "Graham Greene and the Problem of Evil." The first chap­ter of the thesis was published in a national magazine, the first of his writing to be printed.

"That sounds as though you were on the threshold of a literary career," I remarked. Ken responded, "Curiously enough, it proved

Kenneth A. Lohf Collecting for Columbia 9

more important in starting me on my way as a book collector. Since the library at that time was deficient in their holdings of Greene's books, I started to search the New York bookshops for his novels which were just becoming popular on this side of the Atlantic. For

Three works of poetry by Kenneth A. Lohf pul)li.shed by the KellyWinterton Pres.s, the Edgewater Prc.s.s, and the Janus Press

very little I acquired first editions o{ Brighton Rock, England Made Me, and The Ministry of Fear, among others. As for teaching, I even­tually dropped the idea in favor of a library career because of my newly developed passion for identifying and gathering rare editions. I received a master's degree from the School of Library Service at

10 Dallas Pratt

Columbia in 1952 and then moved through several positions in the library system until I succeeded the late Roland Baughman as Librarian for Rare Books and Manuscripts in 1967-1968."

"Ken, since by your own admission you were 'hooked' as a book collector in your mid-twenties, it's not surprising that you're now known for several large and remarkable collections of your own," I remarked, "such as the art and literature of the Pre-Raphaelites and Victorian poetry, the writing of the English critic and poet Arthur Symons, and especially the work of the British poets of the First and Second World Wars." "That's true, these are the areas on which I have concentrated as a collector, a sometimes costly and obsessive avocation, by the way. In my earliest serious collecting I concentrated on drawings, letters, and first editions of such figures as Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt, Rossetti, Landseer, and Ruskin. As to the First World War poets, I am particularly attracted by Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and most of all, Wilfred Owen who ranks, I believe, not only as the supreme war poet but as among the finest English poets of all time. This collection includes some one hundred manuscripts and seven hundred first editions. From World War III have more than one thousand first editions of British poets, and of these, Alun Lewis, who served in India as I did, appeals most to me."

I recalled to Ken two exhibitions which I had viewed at the Gro-lier Club in New York based on his collections—one on Sir Edward Burne-Jones in 1971 and another on the "Soldier Poets of the Great War'' in 19 8 8; they reminded me that Ken is currently president of the Grolier Club. He is also a fellow of the Pierpont Morgan Library and a council member of the American Museum in Britain. The last-named is a recent appointment, but the Council of the Friends of the Columbia Libraries has benefited from Ken's service as secretary-treasurer for the past twenty years. I, as editor of Columbia Library Columns until he and Rudolph Ellenbogen took over in 1981, greatly valued his assistance during the earlier years, including the lively and informative descriptions of gifts in his

Kenneth A. Lohf Collecting for Columbia 11

column, "Our Growing Collections," which for some twenty-five years has interested readers and pleased donors.

While Ken's service as secretary-treasurer provided the direction and continued growth of the organization and its programs, he rem­inisced with great pleasure about the Council officers and members with whom he was associated since the death in 1972 of Charles Mixer, who had served previously in that office. "The Friends have been fortunate in having the support of so many fine collectors and bibliophiles, and those who were the major forces in organizing the group in 1951, among them the Viscountess Eccles and yourself Dallas, have done a great service to the Libraries in inspiring that support. Later notable officers of the Friends, among them Alan H. Kempner, Morris H. Saffron, Gordon N. Ray, and Frank Streeter have continued that tradition with distinction. In addition, donors have been especially generous in entrusting us with their family papers and their treasures, and many of these donors have over the years become my personal friends, such as Lira Hornick, George M. Jaffin, Corliss Lamont, Jack Harris Samuels, lola Haverstick, and Louise Woods, among many, many others. All of them have enriched my professional and personal lives more fully than I can ever express."

I continued with my questions: "Ken, the Council of the Friends is continually astounded at their meetings by your reports of vast collections of papers and books which have been donated. Running through the catalogue, I note the Samuels Collection of two hun­dred volumes of seventeenth-centurv English drama (17); the Carnegie Corporation Papers (60); the Community Service Society Papers and the large group of early twentieth-century photographs (62); the Harper & Row contracts, including many for the publica­tion of Herman MeK'ille's novels (41); and the Simon & Schuster Papers, from which is exhibited Mrs. Schuster's gift of Beerbohm's drawing of G. B. Shaw lecturing to the Fabian Society (59). Added to these are the large collections of papers donated by literary agents, notably James Oliver Brown and Paul Revere Reynolds. We

12 Dallas Pratt

are talking about the addition of several hundred thousand items each year. How does your Library cope with these paper ava­lanches?" Ken, who is a prodigious worker himself is always appre­ciative of the efforts of others, and he answered characteristically, "Because I have such a dedicated staff headed by Bernard Crystal and Rudolph Ellenbogen, aided by their colleagues and a steady stream of student assistants, and with a little help from our friends the computers. Even though we are sometimes overwhelmed by the large gifts, they always remind us of the generosity of our thought­ful and loyal donors. Further, these gifts satisfy and encourage us because we know that students and scholars will make effective use of these resources in their studies and publications."

During his three and a half decades in the Rare Book and Manu­script Library, which he has headed for the past twenty-five years. Ken has directed much progress in constructing a new library, in building collections, and in encouraging research. The great original collections—Plimpton, Smith, Lodge, Brander Matthews, Seligman, Epstean, et al.—have been better cared for and more thoroughly used by several generations of Columbians and visiting scholars from across this country and from abroad. His encourage­ment for the establishment of endowed book purchase funds—such as the Solton and Julia Engel, Friends of the Libraries, Albert Ulmann, Louis and Marguerite Cohn, Herman and Aveve Cohen, and Jack Harris Samuels funds, to name those represented in the catalogue—has stimulated an ever-increasing inflow of gifts in cash and in kind, which amounted to $1.6 million last year.

Ken retires at the end of the year. He leaves behind a gift which is not mentioned in the catalogue yet may be the most valuable of all. Let me record it here: good will toward the Library, based on affec­tion for Ken, of many hundreds of friends.

The Play's the Thing CAROL Z. ROTHKOPF

Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was first performed on The Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival in 1966. Fifteen years later, in The Festival Times for August

13, 1981, Stoppard recalled some of the excitement that accompa­nied that opening. The director resigned before the play went into rehearsal in Edinburgh. The players were rehearsing with a script that had been "typed by somebody who knew somebody who could type.. . ." The actors' "touching faith in [the] play" caused them faithfully to speak their lines complete with typographical errors with fairly hilarious, albeit unintended, consequences. Stop­pard arrived in Edinburgh for the last rehearsals and had to step in, discovering as he has said, a "latent desire to stick my oar in every five minutes during the rehearsals. . . ."

A few dozen people turned up on opening night to see what Stoppard had insisted be billed as a comedy. "The amount of laugh­ter which the play generated hardly justified my insistence." A com­mon reaction seems to have been bemusement. Scottish newspaper reviews were discouraging. One was headlined with the plaintive words, "What's it all about, Tom?"

Stoppard remembers finding all this only moderately depressing since his first novel. Lord Malquist and the Moon, was about to be published and seemed to hold more promise. However, on his return home to England, Stoppard found a telegram from Kenneth Tynan, then literary director of the National Theatre, askingto read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The play opened at the Old Vic in April 1967. The Sunday Times drama critic called the play "the most important event in the British professional theatre of the last nine years" or since the opening of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party. Writing in the New Yorker in 1977, Tynan observed that the play and the playwright were "hailed with rapturous. . . unanim­ity." The New York production was greeted with a mixture of enthusiasm and bafflement but won the Tony Award for best play m 1968.

13

14 Carol Z. Rothkopf

Obviously having the playscript in the Rare Book and Manu­script Library would be noteworthy, but the copy that has become pan of the Columbia collections is made unique by its associations.

Marguerite A. Cohn and Carl Petersen, 1977, at the University of Virginia reception held in her honor

(Photograph courtes\' ot the author)

It is inscribed "Carl—I'm at Claridge's, slumming with an old lady. Tom Stoppard." On a separate sheet the "old lady" wrote, "If it wasn't Tom, I'd be insulted!" The lady in question was Marguerite A. Cohn, by then (the late 1970s) the doyenne of New York anti­quarian bookdealers. Her shop, the House of Books, was a mecca

The Play's the Thing 15

for book collectors as different as were Tom Stoppard and Carl Petersen (1929-1992) , the noted Faulkner collector and bibliographer.

Although the House of Books closed when Mrs. Cohn died in 1984 (and the shop's books and papers became part of the Library's collections), there are still a remarkable number of people who fondly recall the shop and its owner who was known almost univer­sally as "Margie."

A number of people doubtless realized that Margie's knowledge of twentieth-century first editions, their authors, and their collec­tors was unique, but Petersen was the only person to convince her seriously to consider "posterity," as she herself came to call it. As a result, during a series of holidays from his home and work in the Midwest in the 1970s, Petersen interviewed Margie while a tape recorder preserved their dialogues.

Sensibly beginning the interviews with recollections of his own first visits to the shop when he had been in service with the Army in the early 1950s, Petersen gradually broke down Margie's reticence in front of the whirring posterity machine. She spoke with love and pride of founding the business in 1930 with her husband, the late Louis Henry Cohn, of somehow surviving against all odds during the depression, and gradually coming to know what now seems a veritable pantheon of twentieth-century literary giants (see Colum­bia Library Columns, November 1985). Among them were Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Vincent Benet, Marianne Moore, and T. S. Eliot—all of whom were also represented in the distinguished limited editions published by the House of Books as the Crown Octavos.

Margie took particular delight in being the friend of so many of her customers and most especially her "young men" whom she watched over with great affection. As the interviews reached the then-present day, the 1970s, Petersen teased Margie a bit by saying, "I think your most recent conquest is Tom Stoppard." Margie replied, "I don't know if you could call it a conquest" but gave an

R0£ENCtyyJT2 AND GUILDIiKSTERN ARE DEAD

by

TOM STOPPARD

(I uuiM,rs

Zt t 'CsLi I iOV

4 ^ ^ UvVcDi-J

David Merrick 246 West 44th Street"" New York , N. Y. 10036

LO 3-7520

Tom Stoppard's note to Carl Petersen on the script o( Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Marguerite A. Cohn's reply

The Play's the Thing 17

up-to-the-minute account of Stoppard's kindnesses to her, conclud­ing "he is a very sweet person."

She recalled with particular pleasure that on one of her trips to London (where she traveled at least once a year in search of stock for the shop) Stoppard had made a special effort just to meet her for a cup of coffee. In 1974 when Stoppard came to New York for the Broadway opening of Travesties, he invited Margie to a luncheon for the cast and special guests such as S. J. Perelman.

It was so nice of him. He took me around and introduced me to everybody in the cast and told them to stop in and see my wonderful books. And then this fall when he was here {or Dirty Linen [1976], I don't remember if I wrote him a line again but he was stopping at the Pierre for two days. Mrs. Stoppard came over too. They were treat­ing themselves to a swank hotel, and they were very sweet—they had a luncheon date but they came in for about a half an hour, just to say hello to me. He's a very gentlemanly person.

Stoppard's kindnesses continued. In December 1977 Margie was honored by the University of Virginia for making the Alderman Library's typescript of The Sun Also Rises complete by locating and donating sixteen pages that had been missing from the manuscript. Stoppard was invited to be one of the group who celebrated the event at Charlottesville. He made a special trip to the United States to be part of the festivities and made the event even more memora­ble for Margie by presenting her with an inscribed copy of Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, which had only had one performance up to that time.

It is scarcely to be wondered at, then, that the playwright was willing to inscribe a copy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for Peter­sen, a copy that Margie had doubtless just found and brought to the meeting in London for exactly that purpose. And it is just as unsur­prising, given all these circumstances, that Margie was not about to grumble in print and for "posterity" about being referred to as "an old lady." She was after all about eighty at the time, and being so well loved surely lessened the sting in the words.

In the winter of 1983-1984, when Margie was still, in her phrase, "going to business" every day, she was informed that she

18 Carol Z. Rothkopf

had to vacate her shop at 667 Madison Avenue after almost twenty years there so that renovations could be made on the building, and in the time-honored way, rents increased. Finding a new location for the business and making the move proved to be deeply disturb-

The author with Tom Stoppard at the 1977 reception honoring Marguerite A. Cohn (Photograph

courtesy of the author)

ing to Margie. The new shop never suited her as any of her earlier locations had done. She was tired and fragile but absolutely deter­mined to carry on her business. She would hear no talk of moving the business into her home and certainly none of closing shop entirely.

The Play's the Thing 19

When Stoppard came to New York for the opening of The Real Thing, he found the House of Books at its new location. He said later of that visit that Margie

. , . always seemed to be a survivor, though the la.st time I saw her, which was just after she had moved into her new premises, I thought for the first time that she was showing the extra layer of anxiety felt by the elderly. She was worried about the place itself and about the shelves being all right....

She was also deeply frightened of losing her memory and seemed to have disguised from Stoppard the panicky moment when she could not remember his name. For his part, Stoppard was as kind as ever, inviting Margie to a party for the cast of The Real Thing at the Carlyle Hotel. With a customary display of her indomitable spirit, she went to the party. Her account of it later revealed just that layer of anxiety that Stoppard had detected, since she was concerned that the party had been a crowded one and that she could not clearly remember whom she had met. One member of the cast was described as being very tall, thin, and having a scraggly beard. It was Jeremy Irons, whom most of New York would have given a lot to meet. Typically, Margie was more concerned that she did not have a chance for a good talk with Stoppard.

After much debate, Margie decided in July 19 84 to go to London again to buy books for stock and to see old friends. Her concession to her eighty-six years was that she would not go to the London Antiquarian Book Fair. Apologizing to one and all for needing to carry a cane, she did manage the trip to England, dinners in her favorite restaurants, and to buy books for stock. On August 10, shortly before she was to come home, she was struck and killed by a truck as she crossed the street.

In October 1984, at a memorial service in London organized by the distinguished English bookman Anthony Rota, Tom Stoppard was the main speaker. He described Margie as a

. . . survivor and it is terrible that she was laid low finally in that ghastly way. Vm glad that I can, as we all can, remember her in a prime which lasted and stretched right up the years to a time of life where we should be fortunate to have a prime left.. ..

20 Carol Z. Rothkopf

Stoppard added that in some ways Margie reminded him of

. . . an off-stage character in Death of a Salesman who's referred to as the sort of salesman who doesn't have to go around beating the bushes. He arrives at a place and puts his slippers on and the world comes to his door, and he was at it at the age of 80, a revered figure. Of course the analogy breaks down all over the place but there was something about this with Margie: Margie was there and you came to fmd her, and I shall always think it a privilege to have found her.

There is no doubt in the mind of anyone who knew Margie that

she regarded it as a great privilege to have been a friend of Tom

Stoppard.

Instructing Women

Conduct Books in the Plimpton Library

PATRICIA A. CAHILL

Among the 16,000 volumes that George A. Plimpton pre­sented to the University in 19 3 6 is a remarkable collection of books on the subject of women's education. Although

this collection contains copies of many important treatises—books such as the first English translation of Anna Maria van Schurman's 16 5 9 work. The Learned Maid, or Whether a Maid May Be a Scholar? A Logick Exercise Written in Latin (and answered vigorously in the affirmative) and an early edition of Emma Willard's IS19 Address to the Public... Proposing a Plan for Improving Female Education, an appeal by the well-known educator to members of the New York legislature—this fact alone does not explain why the collection is remarkable. The collection is remarkable not because it contains these treatises, but because it also contains numerous textbooks, what Plimpton termed "the tools of learning" themselves. And what makes it most remarkable is that among these volumes are dozens of conduct books for women.

Conduct books setting forth proper behavior for women have been around for centuries; indeed, one may trace the precursors of such contemporary works as Miss Manners' Guide to Rearing Perfect Children and the Cosmo Girl's Guide at least as far back as the four­teenth century when Geoffrey de la Tour Landry compiled the Book of the Knight of the Tower as a guide for his three daughters. Despite their long history and perennial popularity, however, such works are absent from the shelves of many rare book libraries. Their absence can in part be explained by the fact that relatively few con­duct books have survived: Often published in cheap editions, they were practical texts, not intended to last through the ages. But no doubt the main reason one cannot find them in the stacks is that few

An exhibition of female conduct l)ooks will be on \ieu- in the Rare Book and Manuscript

Library through December 31. 1992.

21

22 Patricia A. Cahill

people have recognized their importance. While conduct books for men, works such as Castiglione's Book of the Courtier and Sir Thomas Elyot's A Book Named the Governor, have long enjoyed canonical status, those written for women have largely been ignored.

Recently, however, people have begun to pay attention to female conduct books and have made it plain that, whatever their "liter­ary" qualities, these texts are well worth reading. More specifically, scholars have demonstrated that books instructing women on man­ners and morals are not merely quaint or amusing; rather, they are invaluable sources for a history not yet written. Scholars have begun to use them to explore topics such as changes in Western concep­tions of marriage, childhood, and gender; the rise of the profes­sional woman writer and a female market for books; the connec­tions between Daniel Defoe's novels and his domestic guides; and the formation of the English middle classes. PUmpton's marvelous collection of conduct books, a collection especially strong in works published in England and America between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, is, in other words, a rich resource not only for those engaged in traditional bibliographical studies, but also for those exploring newer avenues of research. In an attempt to make this resource better known, I offer below a brief survey of some of the more interesting works in his collection.

One of the earliest of these works is the English translation of Juan Luis Vives's De Institutione Foeminae Christianae, published in London around 1527 as A Very Fruteful and Pleasant Booke Called the Instruction of a Christen Woman. Translated by Richard Hyrde, who was probably the first English author to argue in print in favor of women's education, the work was an immediate success. Before the century drew to a close, it had been translated into Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish and had appeared in over forty edi­tions. Addressing the small group of upper-class women who might be lucky enough to receive an education, Vives prescribes a rigorous program of study in which the writings of the church fathers and of Plato, Cicero, and Plutarch are all required reading. In spite of this

Instructing Women 2 3

reading list, Vives's book may still be characterized as a relatively modest proposal. Although he dismisses the conventional wisdom regarding female education, Vives nonetheless suggests that girls must be "well bridled and kept under" and that women, unruly by nature, must somehow be held in check.

Another early work in Plimpton's collection, the English transla­tion of Pierre de la Primaudaye's The French Academic (1614-), artic­ulates what were probably more typical attitudes toward women in early modern Europe. Dedicated to "the most Christian King Hen-rie the third," it was ostensibly written for the edification of the male aristocracy. Despite this intended audience, the book takes its place here among female conduct books because Primaudaye, implicitly endorsing the notion that a husband is his wife's best teacher, includes rules for female behavior as well as instruction in government affairs and natural philosophy. According to Pri­maudaye, a wife's first duty is to be subject to her husband; indeed, he adds, "it is an honour to a woman to obey her husband." While he occasionally sounds less sanctimonious, frankly acknowledging the existence of "cholericke" or otherwise flawed husbands, he calmly sets forth a model of wifehood that is breath-taking in its expectations. A wife "must not disclose her husband's imperfection to any body" and must do all she can to publicize her husband's good character. "She must not love to gad abroade or to be scene" and must be silent, modest in her attire, and chaste. Lest wives get discouraged, he notes that "men are inferior to women in perfec­tion of love" and cites in support of this claim examples from the classics:

Women of Lacedaemonia when their husbands were condemned to die for conspiring against their country, came one evening clothed in blacke to the prison, under colour to take their finall farewell of them; and changing their apparell, they covered their husbands with their veiles, who went out and left their wives in their place . . . which were beheaded.

•arca • ^ Bc'hi^viour-

Richard Brathwaitc's popular conduct hooks were published together in a deluxe folio edition, 1641.

Instructing Women 25

With such illustrious tales Primaudaye no doubt hoped to inspire women to view their state, however subservient, as yet a noble calling.

As many of the works in the Plimpton Library underscore, the dramatic class transformations occurring in seventeenth-century English society coincided with the appearance of conduct books addressed to gentry on the rise. Among the most popular of these works were those by Richard Brathwaite, a country squire whose 1630 work, The English Gentleman, was followed one year later by The English Gentlewoman. An exception to the rule that conduct books were relatively inexpensive and portable, these two texts along with The Turtles Triumph, a treatise on the joys of marriage, were issued together in 1641 in a deluxe folio edition. Often described as handbooks to improvement, Brathwaite's books were avidly consulted by members of the middle classes who apparently found wisdom in his hymns to hard work, thriftiness, and piety. In The English Gentlewoman, upwardly mobile women were told how to behave and what to wear (avoid the "phantasticke Fashions late introduc'd where attires are not made to keep cold out, but to bring cold in"); were treated to edifying apothegms ("Choose rather with Penelope to weave and unweave than to give idleness the least leave"); and were counseled incessantly on the virtues of chastity, industry, and obedience.

Although manuals like Brathwaite's may have been the ones most popular with the seventeenth-century English middle classes, one need only examine The Second Part of Youths Behaviour, or Decency in Conversation Amongst Women (1664) to see that a market also existed for works registering different views. Reading The Second Part, in fact, one is struck by how its author, most probably Robert Codrington, seems enchanted by all things feminine. Indeed, he cel­ebrates domesticity: He praises female "knowledge of spicery," pays tribute to "the art of candying and preserving," and enthusiastically sets forth recommended bills of fare featuring such delicacies as pigeon pie and neck of mutton. Moreover, he writes in admiration

26 Patricia A. Cahill

of the "feminine" traits of "softness" and humility, traits that his precursors frequently wrote about with condescension or used in arguments for female inferiority. In his disquisition on basic first

Jjy II^/TL' i!'£i'ntiti',ir. L'r JJlci-n.fii^sh.trfi 'Daii jrmi /,fr/Liifre..iiiJw/t;!j^r^ij/.ii^vi!ii.:,i! (VirStin amu-zJ amaptini c.irtn tcvum &.nnvA can'£>irfh,ana EJnrahmdae

Robert Codrington admires feminine traits in The Second Part of Youths Behaviour. 1664.

aid, for instance, Codrington marvels at the healing abilities of the feminine sex:

iVlany Ladies and Gentlewomen have very rare hands in the Contu­sions, green Wounds, and many Sores, and other Evils which are daily incident unto Men, and Women . . . thev often exceed the cun­ning of the Chirurgions themselves.

Instructing Women 27

In light of his apparent interest in and respect for all things female, it is difficult to doubt the sincerity of his conclusion: "Huswifery is the most Honourable, and Profitable Profession of a Gentle­woman."

In The Ladies Calling (167 i), a popular work generally attributed to the Anglican cleric Richard Allestree, femininity is defined and female duty prescribed quite differently. Writing at a time when the law forbade wives to have fortunes of their own, Allestree embraces the unconventional notion that a wife's duty included the manage­ment of her husband's fortune. Apart from that view, however, Allestree is unabashedly conservative. Like many conduct book writers, he uses the Bible to justify his instructions to women: Con­stantly reminding his readersthatthey are the frail daughters of Eve, he exhorts them to cultivate modesty, meekness, and, most impor­tantly, chastity. He asserts:

Every indecent curiosity, or impure fancy is a deflowVing of the mind, and every the least corruption of them gives some degrees of defilement to the Body too. . . . She that listens to any wanton Dis­course has violated her ears; she that speaks any, her tongue; every immodest glance vitiates her eye, and every the lightest act of dalli­ance leaves something of stain and sulliage behind it.

Believing in the malleability of the female mind as well as in the power of the word, Allestree assumes that, by consulting his text, women will hear their "calling" and so transform themselves. He worries, however, that other books may be equally powerful: Dis­cussing the readinghabitsof young women, he anxiously notes that romances "often leave ill impressions behind them . . . and are apt to insinuate unwary Readers." Plainly, the rise of the press could be seen as both a problem as well as a solution, as both cause and cure of errant ladies.

The clerics were not the only ones in England who saw the need for pedagogical texts for women: The call for more female conduct books was made in the pages of Addison and Steele's Spectator and was echoed by less famous writers as well. George Hickes, the trans­lator of the two strikingly different French texts issued together in 1708 as Instructions for the Education of a Daughter, ruefully notes in

28 Patricia A. Cahill

his introduction that "there never was an age in England, wherein there was more need of them." In the first of these two texts, Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon, a high-ranking prelate, argues that daughters must be taught the classics and must receive

Frontispiece ot Richard Allestree's popular work, printed in Oxford at the Sheldonian

Theater, 1677

more than a merely superficial education. By contrast, the author of the second text, the Chevalier de la Chetardie, almost seems to embrace superficiality. He cautions young women against indis­criminate reading: Philosophy may "perplex your thoughts" and romances may "infect the innocence of your mind." And he mocks

Instructing Women 29

the idea of the female intellectual, warning them, "Never pretend to set up for a Learned lady or Critick."

Despite Chetardie's admonitions, learned ladies and critics con­tinued to flourish; indeed, during the period between 1750 and 1850, a period deemed by some to be the high-water mark of female conduct literature, such women were frequently the authors of conduct books. Predictably, these women were as various in their views as their male predecessors; the books convey the celebrated radicalism of Mary WoUstonecraft (1689-1762) as well as the more conventional views of the more obscure Jane West (1758-1852). Among the prominent women whose conduct books Plimpton col­lected is the English novelist, reformer, and philanthropist Hannah More. In 1777 More published Essays on Various Subjects, Princi­pally Designed for Young Ladies, a work that might seem to typify the genre, but that in fact nearly subverts it: Instead of training young ladies how to act in society, it offers a stern critique of the fashion­able classes. In Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education With a View of the Principles and Conduct Prevalent Among Women of Rank and Fortune (1806), More continues to decry the manner in which girls are brought up; without denying the desirability of grace and charm, she insists that young women must also cultivate a Christian, and distinctively feminine, morality. She writes, "Even those who admit of the power of female elegance on the manners of men, do not always attend to the influence of female principles on their character." And More was not alone in this view: Nineteenth-century conduct book writers exhibit a fascination with the notion of beneficent female influence and the uses to which it may be put. Indeed, even social reformers like Catharine E. Beecher in \\er Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism (18 37) appealed, as a matter of course, to the ideas of femininity and female principles put forth by writers like More in order to persuade women that they had important duties outside the home.

That conduct literature was at least as important in the demo­cratic society emerging in America as it was in a class-conscious Brit­ish society is suggested by the fact that guides to proper behavior

30 Patricia A. Cahill

were often among the first books to be published when an Ameri­can printer set up shop. Plimpton's 1786 edition o{ Principles of Politeness, and of Knowing the World..., for instance, was probably the first book published in New Hampshire. Its editor, John Trussler, "methodified and digested" two texts first published in England: Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, about which Dr. Johnson commented, "They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master"; and Dr. Gregory's A Father's Legacy to His Daughter, a work in which sentimentalism reaches new heights. In bringing these works together, Trussler aimed to offer "a system of polite and moral instruction . . . that the teacher may be provided with suitable means for mending the manners of his pupils." He was certainly not the first to see a market for conduct books in the schools; by the beginning of the eighteenth century, many schools had begun to impart the "polite and moral instruc­tion" that had formerly been taught only in the home. Nor, of course, was Trussler's textbook the first to teach ideas about gender along with other lessons. From Chesterfield's Letters, a boy learns about manhood as he learns about manners; the work tells him how to "make his way among the crowd," offering worldly advice, for example, to the boy who has received an insult: "If you cannot be justified in knocking the offender down, you must not notice the offence; for, in the eye of the world, taking an affront calmly is con­sidered as cowardice." In contrast to this, Gregory's text, purport­edly written by a father on his deathbed for the benefit of his moth­erless daughters, emphasizes ideal virtue and teaches not action but passivity. Though Gregory addresses a "forlorn and helpless" audi­ence, he offers little practical help; instead, by spouting platitudes such as, "Have a sacred regard for truth" and "Lying is a mean and despicable vice," he schools girls into submission and aims to incul­cate virtues that Chesterfield wholely ignores.

While female conduct books increasingly began to resemble each other in form, they continued to differ widely in content. To uncover the source of these differences, one need only consider the

Instructing Women 31

title of Ann Murray's work, Mentoria-, or The Young Ladies Instruc­tor; in Familiar Conversations, on Moral and Entertaining Subjects Calculated to Improve Young Minds in the Essential as well as Orna­mental Parts of Female Education (18 00), a title that reminds one that any discourse on female education was necessarily a discourse on both its "essential" and its "ornamental" parts, neither of which was strictly defined. For Murray, who was the preceptress in the Royal Nursery and an ardent proponent of female education, edu­cating women includes instruction in academic subjects like geogra­phy, astronomy, and geometry as well as in "feminine" subjects like "truth and sincerity" and "politeness, civility and gratitude." Inter­estingly, she frequently blurs the distinctions between the "essen­tial" and the "ornamental," the "entertaining" and the "moral." She characterizes mathematics as "entertaining" but nonetheless teaches it with high seriousness. And she invests manners, which one might think of as mere ornament, with a great deal of impor­tance: Discussing the question of how one should treat one's ser­vants, she implies that a complex moral code underlies all proper conduct. Ultimately, she suggests that nothing is ornamental in a female education, that knowledge of the intricate rules dictating social conduct is as essential as knowledge of the laws of mathemat­ics and the principles of grammar.

One sees a decidedly different view of the essential parts of female education in Hester Chapone's Letters on the Improvement of the Mind{IS22). While Chapone addresses more or less the same top­ics, she takes a far more pragmatic approach. Even when she dis-cu.sses high-minded subjects such as "the regulation of the heart and affections," .she injects a note of realism. She warns that the reputa­tion of a young woman will be irreparably damaged if she consorts with married women who "tolerate the addresses of a lover," and she insists, at great length, that husbands should be chosen on what she defines as "rational" grounds; "suitableness of character, degree and fortune." One may also see in this work the emergence of the new female "science" of domestic economy, the study of how to

32 Patricia A. Cahill

manage a household most efficiently. "Economy," Chapone writes:

. . . is so important a part of a woman's character, so necessary to her own happiness, and so essential to her performing properly the duties of a wife and of a mother, that it ought to have the precedence of all other accomplishments, and take its rank next to the first duties of life.

Putting forth basic principles (e.g., "lay out your general plan of living in a just proportion to your fortune and rank"), Chapone helps to set the stage for the more detailed treatises that, in subse­quent decades, women like Harriet Beecher Stowe would offer to an enthusiastic female public.

Charles Butler's The American Lady (1836), the last book in this survey, takes yet another view of the essential parts of female educa­tion and illustrates how even conduct book writers got caught up in the national self-consciousness that characterizes so much of the lit­erature of the early nineteenth century. Forging links between notions of femininity and notions of nationhood, Butler begins by asserting:

If the preservation of republican institutions depends upon the vir­tue and intelligence of our sons, it is no less certain that their perpe­tuity will result from the mental and moral superiority of our daughters.

As it turns out, what his high-flown language really means is that men should run the country and women should stay home and raise children: Female education begins and ends with reminding women of their essential femininity. More specifically, for Butler, female "mental and moral superiority" is synonymous with ministering "to the comfort of husbands, of parents, of brothers and sisters "; with "forming and improving the general manners, disposition, and conduct of the other sex" (although not, one assumes, with writing books on these subjects); and with "modelling the human mind, during the early stages of its growth." Predictably, when But­ler gets around to the question of how women should spend their

Instructing Women 33

The frontispiece of Charles Butler's The American Lady, 18 36, illustrates the author's assertion that "The first of Parental duties which nature points out to the Mother is to be herself the nurse

of her own Offspring,"

days, he has little practical advice: Unlike his female contempo­

raries, he seems perfectly ignorant of the difficulties that marriage

and family—no matter how delightful—posed to nineteenth cen­

tury women.

34 Patricia A. Cahill

As this last work so plainly demonstrates, the voice of patriarchal culture often makes itself heard in conduct books. As I have endeav­ored to show in this survey, however, these texts registered many other voices as well. To read Plimpton's conduct books, in short, is to realize that their representations of womanhood have been com­plicated and contradictory. Moreover, to read these neglected books and to listen to these "lost" voices is to be reminded of just how little we know about their original readership; and it is to be reminded that, until we know more about how girls and women read these texts, whether in submission or in rebellion, we will in a fundamental way be missing their meaning.

Our Growing Collections KENNETH A. LOHF

Beuf gift. Mrs. Beatrice Gallatin Beuf has presented an important seventeenth-century Russian manuscript: the Charter of Czar Michael granting land and other privileges and rights to Anufril, Archbishop of Astrakham and Terek, and to his successors. Of spe­cial importance for the history of Russian church-state relations, the document, a long scroll dated Moscow, August 17, 1622, was written during the first decade of the Romanov dynasty when Czar Michael's father, Philaret, the Patriarch of Moscow and the actual ruler of Russia, embarked on reforms to consolidate state power after the Time of Troubles. Mrs. Beuf has designated her gift in memory of her distinguished late husband. Carlo Beuf

Brown gift. Mr. James Oliver Brown has donated a humorous and satiric letter written to him by the novelist Herbert Gold, dated Feb­ruary 29, 1992, in which he mentions the draft of a new novel, "The Island of Bohemia," which he has just completed.

Burns gift. Dr. Stanley B. Burns and his son, Mr. Jason L. Burns, have presented a collection of approximately one hundred first edi­tions of American literary works that were assembled and used by Joel Ehas Spingarn (A.B., 1895; Ph.D., 1899) who held the posi­tion of professor of comparative literature, 1899-1911. Many of the books are inscribed or have annotations by Professor Spingarn, and several volumes of his own writings are inscribed to his mother. Included in the gift are files of books by major American writers of the nineteenth century, among them William Cullen Bryant, Bret Harte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Dean Howells, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Low­ell, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, John Greenleaf Whittier, and George E. Woodberry

35

36 Kenneth A. Lohf

Dames gift. Mr. Ralph J. Dames has donated a set, complete in nine­teen annual volumes, of William Frend's Evening Amusements; or. The Beauty of the Heavens Displayed, published in London, 1806-1822. A reformer and scientific writer, Frend published the annual series of astronomical observations of the motions of the moon and planets while actively engaged in the formation of the Rock Life Assurance Company and serving as its actuary.

Dewey gift. Professor Emeritus Donald Dewey has presented the fol­lowing three books notable for their importance in the history of economics: Charles Davenant, An Essay upon the Probable Methods of Making a People Gainers in the Ballance of Trade, London, 1700, bound with the author's An Essay upon Ways and Means of Supply­ing the War, London, 1701; John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, London, 1919, inscribed by the author to Clive Bell; and T Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Popu­lation, London, 1807, two volumes in original boards.

Dorfman gift. A group of approximately seven hundred letters, manuscripts, notes, and printed materials has been added to the papers of Professor Joseph Dorfman in a recent gift received from his widow. Pertaining primarily to economists John Bates Clark, Wesley Clair Mitchell, and Thorstein Veblen, the gift includes let­ters from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harlan Fiske Stone, William Howard Taft, and Ida M. Tarbell, among others.

Fuldgift. The Honorable Stanley H. Fuld (LL.B., 1926; LL.D., 1959), chief judge of the State of New York and Court of Appeals, 1967-1973, has donated, for inclusion in the collection of his papers, three volumes containing approximately 150 pieces of cor­respondence and other items, dating primarily from the early 1970s to 1991 and relating largely to his career, after his service on the Court of Appeals, as special counsel to the law firm of Kaye, Scho-ler, Fierman, Hays & Handler.

Our Growing Collections 3 7

Haverstick gift. Mrs. lola Haverstick (A.B., 1946, B.; A.M., 1965) has presented a rare and important salesman's dummy of Edith Wharton's The Fruit of the Tree, a novel published by Scribner's in 1907 shortly after the author moved permanently to France. In extraordinarily fine condition and with top-edge gilt, the copy is stamped on the front paste-down, "Advance Dummy Sample/Pub­lication Day, About Oct. 12." The printed text, including the fron­tispiece illustration by Alonzo Kimball, ends on page 16, and the balance of the volume is blank. Mrs. Haverstick has also donated the First Edition Library printing of Ethan Frome, issued in 1991.

Hays gift. Mrs. Elinor Rice Hays has donated a letter written to her by Leon Trotsky on February 19, 19 3 7, shortly after the Russian communist moved to a suburb of Mexico City. In the letter Trotsky expresses his satisfaction with the results of a recent meeting of sup­porters in planning for further revolutionary actions.

Holt gift. Ms. Nancy Holt, widow of the noted artist Robert Smithson, has presented a collection of her late husband's drawings: a notebook, containing twenty-nine drawings and various notations on thirty-eight pages which relate to the planning for his exhibition at the Lattice Gallery in Rome, 1969, as well as three detached drawings that are studies for works in the Rome exhibition; and a twelve-page notebook with ten drawings, ca. late 1969 or early 1970.

Lax gift. Mr. Robert Lax (A.B., 1938) has donated three books of his poetry, published in 1991, each of which is inscribed: Psalm and The Rooster Poems, published by Stride in Exeter, England; and Psalm & Homage to Wittgenstein, published by Pendo-verlag in Zurich, with a cover drawing by the poet.

38 Kenneth A. Lohf

Leavittgift. Mr. Richard Leavitt (M.S., 1974) has donated for the Historical Collection of Children's Literature a copy of Carolyn WeUs, Mother Goose's Menagerie, published in Boston, 1901, by Noyes, Piatt, & Company, with pictorial cover and illustrations by Peter Newell.

Lerman gift. Mr. Leo Lerman has donated fifty-three first editions and proof copies of recently published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books, including works by Richard L. Bushman, Vaclav Havel, Jay Mclnerney, Paul Mellon, Czeslaw Milosz, Jan Morris, Toni Morrison, and Wallace Stegner, among others.

Molina gift. Professor Fernand R. Molina, formerly of the staff of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, has donated a group of autograph and typewritten letters and printed items, including sev­eral relating to Hart Crane. In addition to letters from Ralph J. Bunche, Frederick J. Hoffman, Samuel Loveman, and Edwin Markham, there is an important letter written by Henri Bergson, dated Paris, December 17, 1922, concerning the publication of a portion of his correspondence in Monde nouveau. Among the printed items is a first edition of Robert Frost's A Further Range, 1936, with the bookplate of the poet.

Noel gift. Mrs. Donald Noel has presented a copy of Georgius l^^n-coh' s De Re Metallica, translated from the first Latin edition of 1556 by Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover, and published in London in 1912 hy the Mining Magazine. The copy is inscribed by President Hoover to Edward E. Flesch.

Novey gift. To her earlier gift of Otto Rank first editions. Dr. Riva Novey has recently added the following additional Rank work: Technik der Psychoanalyse: I. Die Analytische Situation, published in Leipzig and Vienna by Franz Deuticke in 1926.

Our Growing Collections 39

Pathfinder Press gift. The Pathfinder Press, through the courtesy of its publisher, John Riddell, and at the suggestion of George Novack, has donated the typewritten manuscript of an interview with C.

MQTHER GOOSE'S MLNAGERIL - ^ «

The binding design of this 1901 edition is printed in red, vellow, green, and white ink. (l.ea\"itt gift)

Wright Mills, entided "Listen Again, Yankee: 1961." The interview was conducted by Mr. Novack in Los Angeles on July 26, 1962, and was concerned primarily with Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolu­tion, and the positions of President John Kennedy and the United States government.

40 Kenneth A. Lohf

Plimpton gift. Mrs. Francis T P. Plimpton has donated, for addition to the papers of her late husband, a file of letters received by Mr. Plimpton when he was appointed United States ambassador to the United Nations in 1961. Included is correspondence with many government officials, business leaders, and public figures.

Rothkopf gift. In memory ofjames Gilvarry, Mrs. Carol Z. Rothkopf (A.M., 1952) has presented a fine copy of Gerard Manley Hopkins's A Vision of the Mermaids, published in a limited edition of 250 numbered copies by the Oxford University Press in 1929. The text is a facsimile of the poet's manuscript of the poem, dated Christmas 1862, that previously had been only partially published. Bound in paper designed by Paul Nash, the volume has the book­plate of Crosby Gaige; laid in is an early photographic portrait of Hopkins.

Russell gift. Dr. Rinaldino Russell (Ph.D., 1971) has presented, in memory of her late husband Robert W. Russell, a collection of ninety-five volumes of literary and historical works, most of them first editions and many of them iUustrated. Among the authors in the gift are James Branch Cabell, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, James Weldon Johnson, D. H. Lawrence, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Eugene O'Neill; illustrators represented in the gift include Jean de Boss-chere, William Blake, Eric Gill, George Cruikshank, Arthur Rack-ham, Rockwell Kent, and Lynd Ward. Special mention may be made of the following three special editions: James Joyce, Tales Told ofShem and Shaun, Paris, Black Sun Press, 1929, one of five hun­dred numbered copies; Marco Polo, Travels, New York, Scribner's, 1903, two volumes, profusely illustrated; and MarieJonnesco, edi­tor, Roumania, Paris, 1923, a copy of the Royal Edition, bound in blue velvet and issued in fifty copies signed by the editor. Queen Marie of Roumania.

Our Growing Collections 41

"How to Catch a Tiger" in The Electric Telegraph of Fun. 1854, written and illustrated by Alfred Crowquill.

pseudonvm of Alfred H. Forrester (Russell gift)

Schaefiergift. Mr. and Mrs. Sam Schaefler have presented a group of important and unusual printed items and art works that includes: four watercolor paintings of archaeological sites in the Middle East done by a British traveler in the mid-nineteenth century; two water-color drawings, Persia, ca. 1900, with Old Testament themes and

42 Kenneth A. Lohf

Hebrew text; a poster for the exhibition "Vitraux pour Jerusalem" at theMusee des Arts Decoratifsin Paris in 1961, illustrating for the first time Marc Chagall's Jerusalem windows; an etching by Adolph Menzel, "Three Heads," 1843, the second state before the addition of text; an original photograph by Berenice Abbott, "Rhinelander

Photograpti ot the Rhinelander Estate by Berenice Abbott made for the Federal Art Project, March 20, 1936 (Schaefler gift)

Estate," with atelier stamp and in.scription by the photographer, "Federal Art Project W. P. A., March 20, 1936"; two type speci­mens by William Caslon, ca. 1770; and Richard Le Gallienne's/l?z Old Country House, New York and London, Harper & Brothers, 1902. Tipped in the last-named item is a photograph of Le Gal-lienne inscribed by him to his friend Margaret Holmes and with three affectionate letters to her laid in the volume.

Shriftegift. Ms. Evelyn Shrifte has donated, for addition to the Van­guard Press Papers, a group of approximately 1,500 letters, manu­scripts, photographs, and printed items pertaining to the publica-

Our Growing Collections 43

tions issued by Vanguard from the 1950s to the 1980s. Included are extensive files of the letters from Pierre Boulle, James T. Farrell, and Joyce Carol Oates, as well as correspondence with Vardis Fisher, William Rose Benet, Claire Bloom, Phyllis Bottome, Patrick Den­nis, Edward Gorey, Julien Green, Horace Gregory, William Heyen, Archibald MacLeish, Rosalind Russell, Ronald Searle, and Calder Willingham.

Urban gift. Ms. Gretl Urban, the daughter of theatre and architec­tural designer Joseph Urban, has presented several important items for addition to the extensive Joseph Urban Collection: her 1909 autograph album, with a most attractive watercolor title page draw­ing by her father with an Easter theme; Joseph Urban's watercolor drawing of a scene from his first opera stage design in the United States, the Boston, 1912, production of Tales of Hoffman, featuring costume designs for the characters Frantz and Crespel; twenty-six photographs and snapshots of her father and his studio, the Urban family, and friends; seven typewritten manuscripts of Gretl Urban's reminiscences of her father; and miscellaneous letters and clippings.

Weil gift. Mr. James L. Weil has donated two keepsakes that he recently published: Karl Shapiro's poem The Alphabet, designed by Martino Mardersteig and printed at the Stamperia Valdonega in Verona in an edition of seventy-five copies in 1988; and a poem by William Bronk, All Together Now, one of fifty copies printed at the Kelly-Winterton Press in 1992.

Wilbur gift. Mrs. Lorraine Wilbur has presented, in memorv of her late husband Robert L. Wilbur, three oil paintings and one drawing by the American poet and anist Weldon Kees. The paintings, all of them abstract, among which is Kees's earliest known painting, were done by the artist from the mid-1940s to the early 1950s and are very likely among those exhibited at the Peridot Gallery in New

44 Kenneth A. Lohf

York at the time; the signed pen and ink drawing presented, measur­ing twelve by nine inches, was published as the frontispiece to the limited edition of Kees's The Ceremony and Other Stories, published by Abattoir Editions at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1983. Also in Mrs. Wilbur's gift were three letters written by

Weldon Kees's earliest known oil painting, 1944 (Wilbur gift)

Weldon Kees to Mr. Wilbur, as well as clippings, gallery announce­ments, and miscellaneous letters pertaining to Kees's publications and exhibitions.

Wittkower gift. Mrs. Margot Wittkower has presented a further installment of the papers of her late husband. Professor Rudolf Wittkower, comprising approximately 1,200 letters, manuscripts, lecture notes, and proofs. Dating from the period 1951-1976, the papers include correspondence relating to the Slade Lectures which Professor Wittkower delivered in 1970-1971, material concerning the Congress on Proportion in Milan in 1951, the typewritten man­uscripts for his bibliography Literature on Georgian Architecture, and

Our Growing Collections 45

notes for his unpublished annotated bibliography of works on English architecture from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.

Woodring gift. Woodberry Professor Emeritus of Literature Carl R. Woodring has donated twenty-seven inscribed first editions of books by his former Columbia colleagues and students, including works by Jerome H. Buckley, William T de Bary, Karl Kroeber, and Donald H. Reiman, among many others.

Activities of the Friends

Finances. For the twelve-month period ended June 30, 1992, the generaLpurpose contributions totaled $39,851. SpeciaLpurpose gifts and bequests, designated for book and manuscript purchases, for the establishment of new endowments, and for the increase of the principals of established endowments, amounted to S 3 55,680, a substantial increase over the amount donated the previous year. The appraised value of gifts in kind received from individual Friends for the same period was $ 132,028. The total of all gifts and contri­butions since the establishment of the organization in 1951 now stands at $9,549,717.

Fall Reception. A reception to open the exhibition "The Lohf Years" will be held on Wednesday afternoon, November 18, from 5 to 7 o'clock in the Rotunda of Low Memorial Library. The exhibition will mark the retirement of Kenneth A. Lohf as Librarian for Rare Books and Manuscripts and as secretary-treasurer of the Friends of the Libraries. On view will be a selection of rare books, manu­scripts, and art works acquired from 1967 to 1992, the period dur­ing which Mr. Lohf served as Librarian. A catalogue of the exhibi­tion, for which Dr. Dallas Pratt wrote the introduction, will be published to provide a permanent record of the benefactions received from Friends and other donors.

Future Meetings. A reception on Wednesday afternoon, March 3, 1993, will open the spring exhibition, and the annual Bancroft Awards Dinner will be held in the Rotunda of Low Memorial Library on Wednesday evening, April 7, 1993.

46

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

PATRICIA A. CAHILL is a reference librarian, bibliographer, and curator of the Carnegie Corporation archives in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

KENNETH A. LOHF is Columbia's Librarian for Rare Books and Manuscripts.

DAL[,AS PRATT is vice-chairman of the Council of the Friends and was editor of Columbia Library Columns from 1951 to 1980.

CAROL Z. ROT HKOPF. Marguerite A. Cohn's niece, received her master's degree in contemporary British literature from Columbia and is editing the selected letters of Edmund Blunden.

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Columbia Library Columns VOLUME XLII FEBRUARY 1993 NUMBER 2

CONTENTS

Fionest Graft? H o w George Washington TERRENCEJ. M C D O N A L D 3

Plunkitt Became Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

Photographs by Herbert H . Lehman

Scandal in the Headlines: Theodore JEAN W H T E R 2 3

Roosevelt and the Panama Canal

Our Growing Collections RUDOEP?-! EU.ENBOGEN 3 3

Contributors to This Issue 42

Published by THE FRIENDS OF THE COLUMBIA LIBRARIES

Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027

Three issues a year

George W. Plunkitt, 1842-1924, assemblyman, alderman, state senator, and "honest grafter"

Honest Graft?

How George Washington Plunkitt

Became Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

TERRENCEJ. MCDONALD

w: hen Tammany Hall politician George Washington Plunkitt died in 1924, the Nation called him "one of the wisest men in American politics" and declared that

a 1905 book collectmg his wisdom, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, told "all that needs to be told about American politics." The truth was, the Nation opined, that "honesty doesn't matter, efficiency doesn't matter, progressive vision doesn't matter. What matters is the chance of a better job, a better price for wheat, better business con­ditions." Although Plunkitt was a "grafter," his constituents did not care because "they could understand a cheerful and honest grafter who made no pretense of virtue but did practical good right and left every day in the week, better than they could a seventh-day reformer who talked of the public welfare and did nothing tangible for anybody."

Although it may seem ironic that a Tammany Hall "grafter" would receive an accolade in a "reform" magazine like the Nation, in fact, this response is typical of the way this book has been received throughout the twentieth century. Subtitled A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics and edited by New York Evening Post reporter William L. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall went through three editions and became one of the two or three most frequently cited twentieth-century sources on American urban politics. The twenty-two "interviews" and one diary extract in the book contributed the term "honest graft"—profit made from inside information about municipal improvements—to the Ameri­can lexicon. They also affirmed the image of the ward boss as a humorous Irish rogue who was in politics for his own advantage, but who did good things for others along the way. Plunkitt scorned

4 TerrenceJ. McDonald

book learning and political oratory, claiming that he worked in poli­tics "as a business," and kept his power by "studying human nature and acting accordin'," i.e., by providing various types of personal recognition and political patronage. Plunkitt's motto was "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em," and he admitted he became a millionaire through real estate investment in areas where values were about to increase as a result of government projects. But he also found jobs and did favors for his constituents and maintained his power, and Tammany's, as a result.

For many readers, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall has been a lesson in "realistic" liberalism, a brand of politics based not on moralistic views of human nature, but on responses to human needs. A key to Tammany's success—a cue to twentieth-century liberalism—seems to be found in Plunkitt's diary of daily services to his constituents. It chronicles his bailing out a banender at 2 a.m., his kindness to fire victims, court appearances, and job finding on behalf of constituents, as well as his attendance at weddings, funerals, parish bazaars, and political meetings in his district in New York's Upper West Side.

Until recently, little has been known about Plunkitt, Riordon, or the circumstances leading to the publication of the book, despite the book's centrality to our understanding of urban politics. The rich resources of the Columbia University Libraries, including the Edwin Patrick Kilroe Collection of Tammaniana in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, allow us to investigate these men and their relationship, and the picture is, not surprisingly, more complicated than previous accounts have supposed. Plunkitt was a powerful Tammany Hall politician, but the book's editor, Riordon, played a more important role in its production than previously thought. Plunkitt may not even have spoken some of the most famous phrases in the book; and at the time that it was published, he was already well on the way to political oblivion, a trip speeded by the appearance of the work.

George Washington Plunkitt was born in New York City on November 17, 1842, in an area of the Upper West Side of

Honest Graft? S

Manhattan that was later incorporated into Central Park at about West Eighty-fourth Street. His parents were illiterate Irish immi­grants, and his father worked as a laborer. Plunkitt attended public schools from the age of about six until he was eleven, when he began driving horse carts for construction projects in his neighbor­hood. He was later apprenticed to a brush maker and then to a butcher. By 1865 he owned his own butcher shop in the Washing­ton Market. Around 1876 he sold his shop and went into contract­ing and real estate investment on the Upper West Side. Later he became a director of the Riverside Bank and claimed to have become a millionaire through these activities. At some point he married and had one child, although he never spoke of his family.

Plunkitt's public political career began with an unsuccessful run for the New York State Assembly in 1866 when he was twenty-four years old. He ran successfully for the same position in 18 6 8 and won reelection in 1869 and 1870. That same year, while serving in the state legislature, he was elected to the first of four one-year terms as a New York City alderman. He would later claim the distinction of having held four offices simultaneously in the early seventies-assemblyman, county supervisor, alderman, and police magistrate— and he was also a deputy commissioner of street cleaning for six years in that decade. In 18 8 3, he was elected to the New York State Senate, serving until defeated for renomination in 1887. Elected again to the senate in 1891, he stepped down for reasons of health in 1893 but was reelected to the senate in 1899 and served there until defeated in 1904. Plunkitt never explained why he first went into politics, but he never forgot why he lost his first race and won his second: In his unsuccessful race in 1866, he ran without the endorsement of the Tammany Hall Democracy; in the second, he ran with it. For the re.st of his life, Plunkitt would be a Tammany Hall candidate.

For readers today "Tammany Hall" may be the most confusing thing about Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. This is natural because in Plunkitt's day "Tammany Hall" meant two different things. One of these was a building called 'Tammany Hall" that was owned by a men's benevolent organization, like today's Masons or Knights of

Terrence J. McDonald

Tammany Hall, home of the Tammany Society and the "Tammany Hall" faction of the New York City Democratic pany

Columbus, that called itself the "Tammany Society or Columbian Order." The other "Tammany Hall" was a faction of the New York City Democratic party that rented its headquarters and meeting space in the Tammany Hall building from the Tammany Society.

Honest Graft? 7

This was the Tammany Hall Democracy, the political organization or "machine" that by the turn of the century had become synony­mous with the Democratic party in the city.

Plunkitt belonged to both organizations and rose to positions of high responsibility in each. From 1880 until 1905 he was a district leader for the Tammany Hall political organization in which capac­ity he coordinated Tammany activities in his assembly district (the area roughly between Forty-ninth and Fifty-first Streets from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River) and was one of thirty or so men who served on the executive committee of the organization that, in cooperation with the "boss" or leader, made its overall pol­icy. Initiated into the Tammany Society in 1882 (by which time it was a sort of "old boys club" for prominent local Democrats on good terms with the machine), he was elected one of thirteen "Sachems" or chiefs of the organization in 18 9 7 and again in 1900, a position he held until his death.

Plunkitt was highly regarded within Tammany. The organiza­tion's official newspaper, The Tammany Times, declared in 1895 that Plunkitt was "one of nature's noblemen" who had "devoted the best portion of his life to the interests of his constituents"; accordingto this account, "the name of George W. Plunkitt stands as a guarantee of good faith." However, Plunkitt had sold his butcher shop because he found he could make a living in and through politics, both as a Tammany district leader and a state sena­tor. In the state legislature he undoubtedly introduced bills for pub­lic works in New York City hoping to receive the contract and intending to employ his political supporters. But he also enriched himself in other ways: In 18 7 2 he was indicted (but was never tried) for selling street railway franchises while he was an alderman; in the 1880s and 1890s he was alleged to be on the payroll of the New York Central Railroad while he served in the state legislature; and the newspapers charged that he had deals with the City Department of Streets, which rented properties from him at high rates, with the Department of Docks, from which he received construction con-

8 TerrenceJ. McDonald

tracts, and with the city assessor, who under-assessed his properties for tax purposes. In both 1905 and 1913, it was alleged that he sold nominations for offices over which he had control on a scale that ranged from five hundred dollars for a local office to thirty-five thousand dollars for a state supreme court judgeship.

This system seemed to work for Plunkitt, but was it any way to run a city? Some of the best journalists in New York disagreed over the answer to this question. For those of the generation of New York Evening Post editor E. L. Godkin, the answer was a resounding "No." Godkin believed that the Tammany organization was not a real political party but "an organization of clever adventurers, most of them in some degree criminal, for the control of the ignorant and vicious vote of the city in an attack on the property of the taxpay­ers." And, according to Godkin's account in the 1890s, Plunkitt was "the greatest 'hustler' in Tammany Hall" with a record as a state senator in Albany that was "most unsavory.'' He was in politics "as a business," had "no hesitation in using his position for private gain," and was a "thoroughly bad senator." In part because of its makeup and intentions, Tammany stayed in power "not through its own strength, but through the supiness, indifference, and optimism of the rest of the community."

For those of the generation of Lincoln Steffens, however, the impotence of reformers like Godkin against the machine was rooted in their failure to recognize that Tammany ruled not in spite of its vices, but because of its virtues, which included kindness. In one of the most famous accounts of Tammany Hall, Steffens's 1903 article in McClure's magazine entitled "New York: Good Govern­ment in Danger," the muckraker argued that reformers had some­thing to learn from the techniques of machine politicians. Tam­many leaders made no bones about their corruption, but ruled through the suffrage of the people because they spread the fruits of their corruption widely. Steffens provided a lengthy list of the kind­nesses of the district leaders and argued that "Tammany kindness was real kindness and went far." It was "living government, extra­legal, but very actual," and until reformers developed a system to

Honest Graft? 9

replace this kindness Tammany would continue to rule. The machine was vulnerable, though, because its kindness was financed by graft totaling "untold millions of dollars a year." Steffens's cata­log of this graft was lengthy and detailed, and it ranged from kick­backs to the police from saloons and houses of gambling and prosti­tution to illicit profits on public works and on inside information about public improvements. Gi\en all these sources of wealth, Stef­fens thought it was no wonder that the leaders of Tammany were wealthy; but as they grew wealthy district leaders were likely to become cruel. "Their charity is real, at first. But they sell out their own people. They do give them coal and help them in their private troubles, but, as they grow rich and powerful, the kindness goes out of the charity and they cause the troubles they relieve; they sacrifice the children in the schools; let the Health Department neglect the tenements; and, worst of all, plant vice in the neighborhood and in the homes of the poor."

Akhough Steffens did not mention Plunkitt, his attack on graft was an attack on Tammany di.strict leaders like Plunkitt, and his article was in part the stimulus for the publication of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. The connection between Plunkitt and this discus­sion of the machine among reformers was made by William L. Riordon, the editor of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall who, it turns out, was a widely-known journalist in his own right, a sympathizer with the Tammany organization, and a colleague of Lincoln Steffens. To transform George Washington Plunkitt into Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Riordon needed both a "character"—a wav of presenting Plunkitt—and a "hook"—some focus on which to "hang" his story. The "correct" way to portray a Tammany bo.ss was widely known among New York journalists and provided the first; Stef­fens's article on New York when republished as part ot Steffens's 1904 book. The Shame of the Cities, provided the .second.

Like Plunkitt, Riordon was an Irish-American and a Roman Catholic. Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1861, he had set out to become a Catholic priest but left the seminary (allegedly because of

10 TerrenceJ. McDonald

a fondness for drink) and began writing for newspapers in Washing­ton, D.C. He came to New York in 1886 and covered politics for the New York Commercial Advertiser for five years before joining the Post in 1891, again as a political reporter. In 1899, Riordon was sent

William L. Riordon, 1861-1909, journalist and editor of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

to Albany to cover the state legislature for a year. At the time of his death in 1909, he was the Fosf's city hall reporter, and one of the best-known journalists in New York. In his 1922 history of the Post, Allen Nevins wrote that Riordon was thought to be one of "the three most remarkable" reporters on the Post in the 18 90s; Steffens was one of the other two. In fact, Steffens and Riordon worked together for five years on the Post (1892-1897) at a time when there were only six full-time reporters on the paper's staff Nevins wrote

Honest Graft? 11

that Riordon could always be counted on "to have something worthwhile up his sleeve" when the Post needed to fill the paper, and noted that he was well liked among the local politicos and may have been a member of Tammany Hall.

Some of the stories Riordon dug up were probably interviews with Plunkitt. Riordon began his "interviews" with Plunkitt around the time of the New York municipal elections in 1897. Thereafter, they appeared mostly in local election years: 1897, 1901, 1903, and 1905 were the years of two-thirds of the fifteen original interviews that were included in the twenty-three chapters of the book. Although Plunkitt appears to be a colorful and quot­able character in these interviews, it must be remembered that it may have been Riordon who made him this way. Indeed, the "cor­rect" way to portray a ward boss was well understood among writ­ers of the day. As a critic in the Bookman in 1903 wrote, "the Tam­many boss has always been, we have been led to believe, an essentially blunt, matter-of-fact, semi-humorous personage. He never really quite takes himself seriously. Like Byron's buccaneer, he's 'the mildest mannered man that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.' " Plunkitt certainly fit this bill, but these interviews lacked both a focus and a theme. If the series had ended then he would have been remembered simply as a somewhat colorful exponent of the spoils system and home rule for New York City. In none of the interviews in the Post is there mention of a diary, comments about opportunities seen and taken, or a theory of "honest" graft.

Undoubtedly, Riordon found the focus for Plunkitt when The Shame of the Cities appeared in book form in 1904. Both the seventh chapter of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, "On 'The Shame of the Cit­ies,' " and the more iinportant first chapter of the book, "Honest and Dishonest Graft," are direct responses to Steffens. Further­more, in the chapter entitled "The Strenuous Life of the District Leader," the supposed excerpts from Plunkitt's diary listing his many kindnesses are the same kindnesses that Steffens had listed in his article on New York. None of these "interviews" appears outside the book. The chapter on "Honest and Dishonest Graft," perhaps

12 TerrenceJ. McDonald

the best known in the book, was an obvious attempt to defend Tam­many from Steffens's charge that its "kindnesses" were financed by "graft" that to a great extent came from kickbacks from criminals and gamblers. On the contrary, Riordon's Plunkitt claimed the wealth of Tammany leaders—including his own millions—came from the real estate investment he called "honest" graft.

When Riordon died in 1909, the professional journalists' news­paper Editor and Publisher attributed to him the famous phrases of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, claiming that "he gave to the English speaking world the phrase 'honest graft' " and noting that Plunkitt was "made to say" what Riordon wrote. Whether or not this is true, we do know that to construe Plunkitt as a "semi-humorous" rogue, frank about his grafting, but redeemed in the end by his kind­nesses, Riordon made important choices about what he included in and excluded from the book. Besides adding the "interviews" that were directly stimulated by The Shame of the Cities, he decided to leave out the information that Plunkitt had suffered an important political defeat the year before the book was published.

Plunkitt's slide into local political oblivion began in November of 1904 when he was defeated for reelection to his seat in the state senate by a man who was half his age, a political newcomer, a col­lege and law school graduate, a reformer, and, perhaps worst of all, a Republican. Martin Saxe was born in 1874 and raised in a neigh­borhood not far from Plunkitt's. He attended public schools in the district, but went on to prep school and Princeton University where he studied law, philosophy, history, and literature. He graduated from the New York Law School in 1897 and practiced law privately before joining the city corporation counsel's office in 1902 during the reform mayoralty of Seth Low. Saxe campaigned hard in the district, going door to door to meet voters and holding many rallies at which he made the point that Plunkitt's self-enriching deals in the state legislature had "mortgaged" the district to railroad and other interests at the .same time that Plunkitt's twenty years of dis­trict leadership and six previous terms in the state senate had pre-

Honest Graft? 13

vented younger men from taking leadership there. No one could have been more surprised than Plunkitt when Saxe won the elec­tion by more than six hundred votes.

Plunkitt's loss to Saxe emboldened an opponent from within Tammany Hall itself Assemblyman Thomas J. "The" McManus.

George W. Plunkitt seated on his rostrum, the bootblack stand at the New York County Courthouse

Since he first won election to the state assembly as an "indepen­dent" (i.e. non-Tammany) candidate in 1891, McManus had been a thorn in Plunkitt's political side. Born in 1864, and thus twenty-two years younger than Plunkitt, McManus was an attorney with a reputation as an orator who carried on a series of campaigns for the assembly through the 1890s, sometimes with Plunkitt's blessing and sometimes against Plunkitt's hand-picked candidates. Sup­ported within the district by his mother and six brothers—who were a formidable political force themselves—and his own political club, the Thomas J. McManus Association, McManus steadily

14 Terrence J. McDonald

built his political base against Plunkitt as he watched support for the older man wane. In June of 1905 the McManus Association unani­mously endorsed McManus for election to Plunkitt's Tammany Hall leadership of the district. At the McManus Association picnic that August, the ten thousand in attendance were led in the cam­paign song:

Good-bye to Plunkitt boys. He used us like play toys; Now we'll stick to Tom McManus, For "The" is true blue. He'll stick to me and you So we'll chase old Plunkitt to Gowanus.

Like Saxe, McManus alleged that Plunkitt had grown rich while doing little or nothing for his constituents, but McManus also claimed that Plunkitt made extra money by charging Tammany Hall candidates for their nominations. Both McManus and the city alderman from Plunkitt's district said Plunkitt had charged them five hundred dollars for their nominations. These allegations took on more validity when the book Plunkitt of Tammany Hall landed like a bombshell in the campaign. Campaigns for Tammany district leadership moved into their most intense stages in September. The 1905 election was scheduled for Tuesday, September 19. The book was released on September 1, and on September 2 and 3 New York newspapers began running excerpts from it. Once the book arrived and it was seen that Plunkitt was proud to admit he had gained his fortune through graft—albeit allegedly "honest" graft—all the charges against him seemed to carry more weight. Furthermore, the newspapers thereafter referred to him as "honest graft Plunkitt" or "the apostle of honest graft." Nor could he take back the book's boasts about his millions or his willingness to see his opportunities and take them. Unfortunately, this was exactly what his political opponents were saying and to that they added the honorifics "tight­wad" and "Vanderbilt."

Honest Graft? 15

Four hundred police were assigned to the district on the day of the voting, and two calls for additional police help were put in dur­ing the day. More than fifty persons were arrested on charges rang­ing from voting fraud to assault. At midnight Plunkitt and his allies conceded defeat, and the supporters of McManus paraded through the district carrying a coffin at their head, symbolic of the political death of Plunkitt. The next fall McManus completed his triumph by nominating himself for the state senate seat that Plunkitt had held and winning that, too. In 1907 Plunkitt made an attempt to re­take the district leadership that he had lost in 1905. Observers said from the start the attempt was futile; the outcome was a three-thousand vote slaughter that ended the Plunkitt era decisively.

Plunkitt lived on in political obscurity until 1924; yet the influ­ence of "his" book persists. But as the above has demonstrated, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall is less a document describing how urban politics was, than the product of a debate over what urban politics might be. That debate continues today, as it should, because as the story of Plunkitt demonstrates, neither the "bosses" nor the "reformers" at the turn of the century had the final word.

The Photographs of Herbert H. Lehman

HI Inside the Old Crusaders^ Fortress in Accre, Israel, 1959

' erbert H. Lehman (1878-196 3), eminent New York state politician and world figure, was also a talented photogra-

.pher. In his later years the former Governor avidly pur­sued the art of photography. During the 1950s he traveled in Europe, returning to places he had first visited in his role as Director-General of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) after the Second Worid War. Varying in scope from postcard-like land,scapes to moody and enigmatic chia­roscuro studies, these photographs reveal the private side of the pub­lic man, the sensitivity and introspection of an artist.

An exhibition of Herbert H. Lehman's pbotographs will be on view in the Rare Book and

iVlanuscript Library until February 26, 1993, and will be (jn view in the Lehman Suite

from April 15, 1993, to September U, 1993.

16

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En Route to Tivoli, Italy, 1957

Scandal in the Headlines Theodore Roosevelt and the Panama Canal

JEAN WITTER

In 1908 a political scandal unfolded in American newspapers. Journalists questioned the United States government's finan­cial and military role in the acquisition of the rights to the Pan­

ama Canal, and accusations of corruption in the Roosevelt adminis­tration flew. At the center of this scandal was William McMurtie Speer, a forty-three-year-old editorial writer for the New York World.

On December 8, 1908, Speer wrote an editorial that infuriated President Theodore Roosevelt and shocked the nation. In this "history-making editorial," Speer all but calls Roosevelt a liar and suggests a full-scale congressional investigation of the Panama Canal acquisition. Speer writes, " . . . the fact that Theodore Roosevelt as President of the United States issues a public statement about such an important matter full of flagrant untruths, reeking with misstate­ments, challenging line by line the testimony of his associate... makes it imperative that full publicity come at once through the authority and by the action of Congress."

Roosevelt was so angered by the VV&rW editorial and articles in the Indianapolis News that a week later he read a special message before Congress recommending the government sue the New York World and the Indianapolis News for libel. The legal battle that followed became a blot on Roosevelt's political record and a champion cause for First Amendment freedom of the press.

Speer's notes and records of the Panama libel case were recently acquired by the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. A gift from Mrs. Ann Satterthwaite, the collection totals eleven thousand items relating to Speer's many-faceted career: journalist, public official, lawyer, inventor, businessman, publisher, and author. The papers pertaining to the Panama libel case clearly show Speer to have been

23

24 Jean Witter

a thorough investigative reporter. The drafts of his articles and edi­torials that appeared in the World, letters from informants, copies of supporting evidence in his case against Roosevelt, and personal

William McMurtie Speer, 1865-192 3, revealed the Panama Canal scandal in his 1908 New York Wvj-Ay editorial

notes are important sources of information relating to the Panama Canal scandal and reveal the mood of an era in American history when a journalist's yellow pen confronted a president's big stick.

To understand Speer's role in the Panama C anal affair, it is neces­sary to be familiar with the political and cultural climate out of

Scandal in the Headlines 2 5

which the controversy grew. The first decade of the twentieth cen­tury marked a change in the American presidency. As the country sorted out changing policies at home, focus began to shift from domestic to foreign concerns. Improvements in transportation by rail and sea made the world smaller. Nations vied for position in a changing pecking order, and under Roosevelt's tutelage, the United States emerged as an economic and military leader.

As the United States government grew in size and power, so did American companies, and big business and government became the target of journalists, novelists, and critics who attempted to expose abuse and corruption. Roosevelt agreed with many of the charges of the muckrakers, a term he coined in a 1906 speech, but he believed that the front-page sensationalism, the yellow journalism, of the muckrakers was irresponsible. One of the foremost practitioners of this style of journalism was Joseph Pulitzer, owner and publisher of the New York World, the newspaper that published Speer's famous 1908 editorial. To complicate the matter, Roosevelt and Pulitzer were long-time foes. When Roosevelt read his special message to Congress protesting Speer's editorial, he refrained from attacking Speer; rather, he went straight for his personal adversary, Pulitzer. Roosevelt said: "The real offender is Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, editor and proprietor of the World. While the criminal offense of which Mr. Pulitzer has been guilty is in form a libel upon individuals [Roo.sevelt], the great injury done is in blackening the good name of the American people. It should not be left to a private citizen to sue Mr. Pulitzer for libel. He should be prosecuted for libel by the gov­ernmental authorities."

The scandal had gone full circle: First Speer accused Roose\elt of corruption and asked the go\ernment to investigate; then Roosevelt accused Pulitzer of libel and asked the government to prosecute. It is important to stress that both parties were flawed. Roose\elt, for all his success as a pivotal American president, was the product of a political climate best known for patriotic fervor and dollar diplo­macy. Speer and Pulitzer, for all their talents as pioneer journalists

26 Jean Witter

and publishers, were products of a journalistic milieu characterized by sensationalism and emotional exploitation.

Did Speer libel Roosevelt? Was Roosevelt guilty of corruption? The truth may never be known because on March 31, 1911, the United States Supreme Court decided unanimously that the federal

Cartoon by J. H. Donahey depicting Theodore Roosevelt "doing battle " with Joseph Pulitzer

government had no jurisdiction in the case. Speer's notes indicate that he believed he had solid evidence of Roosevelt's involvement. In what isprobably the first draft of an editorial, Speer writes: "The dismissal of the case before Judge Hough precluded The World from presenting to a jury of twelve men the great ma.ss of documen­tary, written and oral evidence in which The World had accumu­lated in proof of its contention that on the disputed question of fact between Theodore Roosevelt and The World, The World was sub­stantially accurate and Mr. Roosevelt was wholly in error."

Interpreting Speer's notes from the case is difficult because they are cryptic, some even in code, but many can now be verified by the public record. For example, the following note is the first entry on a page titled "MY PRIVATE MEMOR. ON PANAMA":

Scandal in the Headlines 2 7

The 2 copies of instructions; one here and the other sent down; schedule arranged by TR. & Cromwell; for revolution to go off on certain day. Am. Gov, wired as per agreement; but (A M) the clock did not go off until the next day.

Speer's memorandum is most likely referring to the American gov­ernment's involvement in the Panamanian revolt of November 3, 1903, which led to the Hay-Banau-Varilla Treaty with Panama on November 17, 1903, giving the United States the strip of land across the Isthmus of Panama in exchange for $10 million and an annuity of $250,000, which Speer believed proved financially beneficial to Roosevelt and his associates. In addition, the treaty gave the United States complete control of the canal zone and other defense sites.

The United States helped stage a revolution in Panama because Colombia (which owned Panama at the time) would not agree to the terms of the treaty. In direct violation of an existing treaty, Roosevelt sent an American warship to Panama to prevent Colom­bian troops from quelling the revolt. These events became a matter of public record, and eighteen years later the United States indemni­fied Colombia $25 million for its loss of Panama.

In another personal memorandum Speer offers further insight into his and Roosevelt's involvement in the complex affair. The journalist's source is apparently Senator John Tyler Morgan, of Ala­bama, who opposed a canal in Panama (favoring a route through Nicaragua) and who sought to expose corrupt American business and political interests in the region. Speer, the memorandum seems to indicate, is acting as some type of intermediary between Manuel Amador de Guerrero, who helped stage the revolt in Panaina, and William Nelson Cromwell, an American attorney for the New Pan­ama Canal Company, an ailing French company that tried unsuc­cessfully to build a canal but still owned the rights to the Isthmus of Panama. Speer writes:

Get full Aff. as for Morgan on Amador, asking me to collect the amount promised him by Cromwell; and the Am. Govt. Also Mr. Roosevelt's agent promised to pay.

28 Jean Witter

Roosevelt in Panama replying to President Amador's welcome, November 14, 1906

If the United States signed a treaty with Panama, then it would also have to purchase the rights from the French company; there­fore, a successful Panamanian revolt was in Cromwell's best inter­ests. Cromwefl also worked closely with Philippe Banau-Varilla, a leading figure in the New Panama Canal Company who also hap­pened to be Panama's first minister to the United States. When

Scandal in the Headlines 2 9

Colombia would not agree to the terms of the original treaty, Banau-Varilla did all in his power to make the Panamanian revolu­tion a success.

But why was Speer involved? Perhaps neither Cromwell nor Roosevelt paid Amador the money each had promised for his help in staging the revolution. Amador may have approached Morgan or Speer for help, holdingthe threat of disclosure over Roosevelt's and Cromwell's heads. This theory may sound far-fetched, but some of Speer's notes indicate that blackmail and cover-ups were common practices. Speer writes:

Explain how Roosevelt hurried down to Panama and made a visit to Amador, when Sen, Morgan began his fight on this subject; How Cromwell & Roosevelt fought to keep it quiet; and how some one in this group told Roosevelt,

In another memorandum, Speer writes:

Cromwell offered me 61,000,000 for silence; but 1 was sworn to Sen. Morgan and the Senators who defended me; that I would not compromise with my enemies.

One million dollars was a hefty bribe in the early 1900s. The size of the figure indicates that Cromwell and his associates had a great deal to lose. Speer's December 1908 editorial identifies Cromwell as the leader of the syndicate of American men who bought up inexpensive stock in the nearly bankrupt New Panama Canal Com­pany, .stock that soared in price when the United States purchased the rights to the Isthmus of Panama from the "French" company. The company was French on paper, but Speer believed the major stockholders to be American, Following Speer's reasoning, the United States paid American businessmen $40 million for the inflated rights to the isthmus. Speer writes in his editorial:

Why did the United States pay 540,000,000 for a bankrupt prop­erty whose control could undoubtedl\" ha\e been bought in the open market for less than S4,000,000?

Who were the new Panama Canal Compan\-r Who bought up the obligations of the old Panama Canal Com­

pany for a few cents on the dollar? Among whom was divided the $ 15,000.000 paid to the new Pan­

ama Canal Company?

30 Jean Witter

The unidentified investors in the New Panama Canal Company had taken a considerable risk. Stock in the failing company would have been worthless unless the United States bought the rights to the Isthmus of Panama. After the Walker Commission submitted its report to Congress in 1901 (recommending the Nicaraguan

Political canoonist Frank Crane summed up the tangled Panama Canal intrigue in the New York Times, 1903

route because the United States would not have the added cost of purchasing the French rights to the Panamanian route). Congress leaned in favor of the Nicaraguan route. Speer's notes, however, reveal that investors in the New Panama Canal Company may have had some extra insurance that Congress would ultimately choose the Panamanian route over the Nicaraguan, Speer writes:

How Cromwell staned the rumor that Sen Morgan has his entire private fonune in Nicaragua, and that was the reason why the Sen, wanted that direction instead of Panama; and how that rumor with others at the critical time, swung Panama,

Regardless of the reasons why Congress ultimately chose the Pan­amanian route, the investors in the New Panama Canal Company enjoyed a huge profit when the United States purchased the

Scandal in the Headlines 31

"French" rights. Who were the investors, and why was this infor­mation so difficult to trace? An unsigned memorandum from Speer's papers gives a clue. It begins much like a spy novel:

My informant says: "The meat in the cocoanut \sic\ is: Who were the stockholders of the Panama Canal? Roosevelt had said that every dollar was paid to the stockholders of the company, but who were the stockholders?

According to this mysterious memorandum, the stock certificates bought by American investors were controlled through a stock pool that operated under a French name. The certificates were left blank and not recorded in the stock transfer book. When the pool sold stock, the record book showed a direct transfer from the original French stockholder to the purchaser.

The author of this mysterious letter offers some additional infor­mation as to the identity of some of the stockholders. The letter says:

My informant says that Cromwell made at least $5,000,000 and that the Tafts were in it. This comes from the soreheads of the old crowd who were not given a chance to participate and I think it is straight.

Many newspapers alleged that future president William H. Taft, his brother Charles P. Taft, and Douglas Robinson, Roosevelt's brother-in-law, were among the stockholders. But Speer's notes reveal a second source indicating the Tafts' involvement— Cromwell—the same man who had on another occasion offered Speer $ 1 million for his silence, Speer writes:

When the dispute arose in the Cromwell Synd. as to a proper diver­sion of the net profits, Mr, C. talked to Mr, Taft over the 'Phone, and asked him what to do, and Mr. Taft told him to settle as he saw fit; and Mr, C. asked Taft to send him a letter to that effect, in a few days. Mr, Cromwell showed me the letter; where Taft told him to make any financial arrangements that he saw fit; and that he, Taft would approve the arrangement in advance, Cromwell stated that he had vidided [sic] all that he had got with R, & Taft,

Speer's note raises four important questions. Is it possible that Cromwell tried to bribe Taft with his own letter by threatening to

32 Jean Witter

show it to Speer? What was Speer and Cromwell's relationship? Did Speer ever serve the interest of Cromwell? Does the "R" in the note refer to Roosevelt?

The answers to these questions may never be known; however, Speer's papers suggest a world of possibilities. Indeed, Roosevelt may have secured the Isthmus of Panama tor his own financial gain and the gain of others, but Speer may not have always been out for the truth but, rather, out for a story.

Our Growing Collections RUDOLPH ELLENBOGEN

Asadourian gift. Mr. William Asadourian has donated to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library: forty typescripts by Pearl S. Buck; over one hundred letters between Ivy Ledbetter Lee, who is known as the "father of modern public relations,'' and his fiancee, Cornelia Bartlett Bigelow, all written in 1901, the year of their marriage; four theatrical posters and associated items relating to the mystical illu­sionist Fanny Prestige; and fifteen cabinet photographs of nineteenth-century actresses.

Barnes gift. The papers of the late editor Joseph Barnes have been donated to the library by his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth B. Barnes. Included in the gift of over twenty-seven thousand items are corre­spondence, manuscripts, scrapbooks, notes, clippings, and memo­randums related to his work as a member of the staff of the follow­ing organizations: the Institute of Pacific Relations, while he was in Russia, Manchuria, Japan, and China during 1931-34; and after­wards at the Office of War Information; the Foreign Policy Associa­tion; the New York Herald Tribune; the New York Star; and Simon & Schuster, during the 1950s and 1960s. Barnes corresponded with, among others, Willy Brandt, Malcolm Cowley, Abraham Flexner, Theodore Koliek, Owen Latimore, Max Lerner, Herbert Matthews, Paul Reynaud, Leo Szilard, and Telford Taylor.

Beeson gift. Mrs. Nora Beeson (A.M., 1948; Ph.D., 1960) has donated nine illustrated Russian books including two published by Academia in Moscow: Alexander Puskin's Euvgenii Onegin, 193 3; and a volume of tales about Prince Igor, Slovo opolky Igorevie, 19 34, illustrated by Ivan I. Golikov, best-known artist of the palekah style; this book is considered one of the most beautiful books published in the 1920s by Academia.

33

Decorated binding bv Ivan I. Golikov in the palekah style ot Slovo o polky Igorevie (Beeson gift)

Our Growing Collections 3 5

Blunden gift. For addition to our extensive collection of Edmund Blunden papers, Mrs, Claire Blunden has donated fourteen letters from Sylva Norman to Edmund Blunden, dating between Decem­ber 1930 and December 1931. Norman collaborated with Edmund Blunden on their 193 2 novel. We 'II Change Our Ground: or. Two on a Tour, and became his second wife in 193 3.

Butcher gift. To his collection of literary research and study of black writers and contemporary social history. Professor Philip Butcher (Ph.D., 1956) has added first editions, periodical issues, photo­graphs, and files of papers relating to James W. Butcher, F G. Jeni­fer, Roy S. Simmonds, Judge Clarence Thomas, and others.

Chandler bequest. By bequest, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library has received the papers of the late Professor Margaret K. Chandler, the first female professor at the Graduate School of Busi­ness at Columbia. Professor Chandler specialized in conflict resolu­tion, collective bargaining, and decision making, and the more than forty thousand items donated pertain mainly to her teaching in the Masters Degree Program for Executives, the Institute for Not-for-Profit Management, and the Police Management Institute at Columbia.

Dewey gift. Professor Emeritus of Economics Donald Dewey has presented to the libraries The Whole Works of Adam Smith, London, 1822. This publication, in five volumes, is the first of Smith's Works in duodecimo format and is bound in calf and includes a hitherto unpublished "Life of the Author,"

Hyman gift. Dr. Allen Hyman, of the Department of Anesthesiol­ogy at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, has presented a copy of Claude Bernard's Lefons sur les effets des substances toxiques et medi-camenteuses, Paris, 1857, foraddition to the Louis and LenaHyman Collection on the History of Anesthesiology in the Special Collec­tions Section of the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library.

3 6 Rudolph Ellenbogen

Bernard's text documents his early work with curare as an anes­thetic agent. The gift was made in conjunction with the sixteenth annual History of Anesthesiology Lecture cosponsored by the Department of Anesthesiology and the Health Sciences Library.

Lerman gift. Mr. Leo Lerman has presented sixty-four proof copies of contemporary fiction and non-fiction, including works by John Ashbery, Jimmy Carter, James Ellroy, Jerzy Kosinski, Norman Mailer, Iris Murdoch, and John Updike.

Lohf gift. Mr. Kenneth A. Lohf (M.A., 1950; M.S., 1952) has added to his many gifts of the past. To the Arthur Symons Papers, which Mr. Lohf established in 1978, he has donated twenty autograph let­ters, the majority addressed to Symons's niece, Lucy Bowser Feather-ston; and the typed manuscript, with corrections and emendations, of Symons's "Introduction to Oliver Twist," 1926, published in Essays of the Year, 1930. To his own collection of papers, Mr. Lohf has added fifty-six letters written between 1821 and 1941 by English authors and artists, including Hall Caine, Sidney Colvin, Cyril Connolly, Aubrey De Vere, Margaret Gatty, Harry Quilter, and William Sharp (Fiona Macleod). To the book collections, Mr. Lohf has added nearly one hundred volumes, among which are Elizabeth Barrett Browning's TiiJoPoews, London, 1854, in wrappers; Vivian Locke Ellis's The Revolt of Woman, and Other Poems, London, 1910, inscribed to Walter de la Mare; Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake, London, 1880, handsomely illustrated from Blake's own works; William Morris's A Dream of John Ball, and, A King's Les­son, London, 1888, illustrated by Edward Burne-Jones; Herbert Read's A World Within a War, Poems, London, 1944, inscribed by the author; and William Rothenstein's /I Plea for a Wider Use of Art­ists & Craftsmen, London, 1916, inscribed by the author, together with a letter of presentation,

McWhinnie gift. Two books for children, The Green Book for Girls and The Violet Book for Girls, both edited by Mrs. Herbert Strang

Our Growing Collections 37

and published by Oxford University Press in the 1920s, have been donated by Mr. John McWhinnie for inclusion in the Historical Collection of Children's Literature.

"The Killing of the Monster" by Sir Edward Burne-Jones; illustration in The Doom of King Acrisius by William Morris (Lohf gift)

Matthews gift. Mr. John L. Matthews,Jr., has added to the papers of Herbert L. Matthews (A.B., 1922) correspondence, photographs, clippings, and a manuscript of an unpublished article entitled "Our Rugged Ancestors," an essay based on Matthews's reading of some two hundred issues of the Connecticut Courant, published between

Rudolph Ellenbogen

Inscribed photograph of Ava Gardner (Palmer gift)

1814 and 1824. The correspondence also includes an exchange between Matthews and Carlos Baker, author of Hemingway: A Life Story, in which Baker requests Matthews to read a first draft of the biography and Matthews records his speculations about Hemingway's breakdown.

Our Growing Collections 3 9

Palmer gift. To his past gifts, Mr. PaulR. Palmer (M.S., 1950; A.M., 1955) has added more than fifty volumes including first editions of works by E. F. Benson, Paul Bowles, Rupert Croft-Cooke, David Daiches, Compton MacKenzie, Beverley Nichols, Simon Raven, Ned Rorem, Osbert Sitwell, Gore Vidal, and Virginia Woolf In addition, there are autographed copies of works by Truman Capote, The Dogs Bark: Public People and Private Places, New York, 197 3, and Harrison E. Salisbury, The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng, Boston, 1992. Mr. Palmer's interest in theater and film is rep­resented by the gift of works by Constance Collier and Errol Flynn, as well as Lawrence Olivier's On Acting, London, 1986, in an edition limited to three hundred numbered and signed copies. The gift also includes forty-four portraits of theater and film stars from the period 1910 to the 1960s, many inscribed or autographed, including por­traits of Richard Barthelmess, Katharine Cornell, Joseph Cotton, Richard Cromwell, Irene Dunne, Dan Duryea, Nelson Eddy, Richard Egan, Ava Gardner, Helen Hayes, Edward Everett Horton, Gene Kelly, Frederic March, Douglass Montgomery, Barbara Stanwyck, and Constance Talmadge.

Raphaelson gift. Mr. Joel Raphaelson has added approximately four­teen thousand letters, manuscripts, and documents to the papers of his father, Samson Raphaelson. The gift is comprised of play scripts, film scripts, and production materials for, among others. The Jazz Singer, Shop Around the Comer, and Trouble in Paradise; articles and autobiographical writings, includinghis "Freundschaft: The Last Time I Saw Lubitsch" about Ernst Lubitsch, published in the New Yorker in May 1981; and short stories. Raphaelson's corre­spondents include Alfred Hitchcock, Elia Kazin, Archibald MacLeish, and Terence Rattigan,

Roscoegift. Mrs. Rosamond Roscoe has presented an addition to the papers of her late husband, Theodore Roscoe, comprising approxi­mately twenty thousand items of correspondence, manuscripts, and research notes for his books The Web of Conspiracy and The Lin-

40 Rudolph Ellenbogen

coin Assassination. In addition, there are extensive files of handwrit­ten and typed transcripts and photocopies of numerous nineteenth-century American letters, manuscripts, diaries, and documents relating to the Civil War. The gift also includes material for other published and unpublished writings by Mr. Roscoe, including The Trent Affair, Drama in Black, Only in New England, and To Live and Die in Dixie.

Sykes gift. From the library of the late Gerald Sykes, Mrs. Claire Sykes has donated sixty-one volumes of fiction, poetry, and other literary works, including several American first editions by James Aldridge, Janet Frame, John Hawkes, and Randall Jarrell. Of special interest are T S. Eliot's The Classics and the Man of Letters, London, 1942, in wrappers, and Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox, Los Angeles, 193 3, inscribed by the author. To her husband's papers, Mrs. Sykes has added photographs, clippings, and approximately fifty letters written primarily during the 1970s by editors, pub­lishers, and other writers to Sykes. Included is a letter from Lawrence Durrell, dated Gard, France, July 18, 1983, regarding his health, his feelings about aging, and their writings.

Tilton gift. Professor Emeritus Eleanor M. Tilton has donated to the Rare Book and Manuscript Libary her professional papers and library related to her teaching and research on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and other nineteenth-century English and American authors. Also in her library of more than two thousand volumes are works on art, philosophy, and history. Of particular note are two hundred rare editions including works by James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Dean Howells, Washington Irving, Henry James, Wallace Stevens, and Anthony TroUope. Included in the gift is Her­man Melville's Israel Potter, New York, 1855, third edition, signed by Melville's brother Allan; James Russell Lowell's copy of George

Opposite: Thistle device from Ducks & Green Peas (Lohf gift)

Our Growing Collections 41

Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie, London, 1869; and the first edition of Emerson's Poems, Boston, 1847, inscribed, "Elizabeth Hoar from her affectionate brother Waldo. 25 December, 1846." Hoar became an adopted sister of the Emersons on the death of their brother, Charles, to whom she was engaged; she was a confi­dante of Emerson and a touchstone for his ideas.

Weil gift. Mr. James L. Weil has donated two editions of poems by English romantic poets that he has published: Percy Bysshe Shelly's Ozymandias, one of fifty copies, a keepsake marking the bicenten­nial of the birth of the poet on August 4, 1992, handsomely printed by the Kelly-Winterton Press on Velke Losiny paper from Emerson and Augustea types; and John Keats's ' Dear Reynolds," one of fifty copies printed on the Officina Bodoni handpress in a variant of the Dante type by IVlartino Mardersteig, 1991.

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

RUDOLPH ELLENBOGEN is Assistant Librarian for Rare Books.

TERRENCEJ. MCDONALD is professor of history at the Uni­versity of Michigan and editor of a new edition of Plunkitt of Tammany Hallio be published in the spring of 1993 by Bedford Books of St. Manin's Press.

JEAN WITTER is editor at Columbia's Office of University Publications and a free-lance visiter and editor.

ISSN 0010-1966

42

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By helping preserve the intellectual accomplishment of the past, we lay the foundation for the university of the future. This is the primary purpose of the Friends of the Columbia Libraries.

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•4

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Columbia Library Columns VOLUME XLIl MAY 1993 NUMBER J

C O N T E N T S

Why 1 Wrote Comedy BELLA COHEN SPEVVACK 3

Generations of Service to the Tsans: The NATI IANIEI. KNIGH T 15

Benckendorffs

"For My Own Pleasure": Frank Akschul's W. GRKXIRY GALI.AGIIER 26 Overbrook Press

Our Growing Collections RUDOLPH ELLENBOGEN 36

Activities of the Friends

Contributors to This Issue 43

Published by T H E F R I E N D S OF T H E C O L U M B I A LIBRARIES

Butler Library, Columbia University, N e w York, N Y 10027

Three issues a year

Bella Cohen Spewack, age twenty-one, two years before she wrote her autobiography

Why I Wrote Comedy BELLA COHEN SPEWACK

Bella Cohen Spewack is best known for her collaboration with her hus­band, Sam Spewack, and with Cole Porter on Kiss Me, Kate. Bella wrote her autobiography Streets in 1922 in Berlin during her first year of marriage when she was twenty-three years old. Each chapter is beaded by one of the many addresses at which she lived as a child growing up in poverty on the Lower East Side of New York City. The following year, "haunted by slum conditions," she was stirred to write a series of articles

for the Evening World. The series led to reform in the Rent Laws under Governor Alfred E. Smith and to the first attempt at slum clearance. It was only after four decades and success that she could look back on the unpublished work and ironically rename it "Why I Wrote Comedy." The two sections that appear below are from "Cannon Street," the first chapter of her unedited manuscript.

C annon Street was the first of the group on the lower East Side that life scooped out for me. It stretches out of Grand Street south past Broome, Delancey, Rivington and Stan­

ton into Houston—a narrow gutter, flanked by narrower sidewalks. On the other side of Grand Street where I used to go Saturday nights to buy my hair ribbons, it ascends like a runway in a theater. At the corner rose the sugary odors of a pie factory.

On the other side of Houston Street, a street of noble width, Cannon Street narrows and narrows until it is but the wink of a blind man's eye: Manhattan Street.

Thousands of people live on Cannon Street, occupying rear houses and front houses from basement to top floor. The houses are sour with the smell of so much crowded human flesh. So many words were spoken that words meant little. Blows meant more.

On this street, I spent the first ten years of my life. On this street, I learned to fear people.

4 Bella Cohen Spewack

We landed in New York and were greeted by a short, frail blond man with pink threaded cheeks. He told me that he was my cousin but he was not. My mother and I spent the first night in a bed with two others in a room back of the restaurant kept by Channeh Rosenthal. Her little girl was a waxen famished looking creature

Children of the streets; photograph by Jessie Tarbo (Community Service Society Papers)

Beals

who was always whining for her "mommeh" and sucked her thin thumb. She was older than I was by two years. I remember her sulk­ing jealousy of my red dress.

I could sing well in Hungarian and German and spoke brokenly as well in Roumanian, a smooth, declamatory Yiddish and before long could mutter realistically English oaths. For all these, the patrons of Channeh Rosenthal's restaurant would pay me in cop­pers which I dutifully handed over to my mother.

My mother did not stay long in Channeh Rosenthal's restaurant. She went to an employment agency on Eourth Street between Ave­nue C and B one of a number on the block. The same string of

Why I Wrote Comedy 5

employment offices exists today—with their blatant blue and white painted signs: SERVANTS, jutting out from the top level of the stores in which they are located.

I grew restive under the enforced waiting of three monotonous days. Mother and I would arrive in the morning, wait until twelve when we would go out and buy an apple from a street peddler, return and wait until four and finally return home. I would play outside by myself or accept overtures from the "Yankee" children after they had teased me to their hearts' content.

When I grew tired I would sit on the floor of the store and watch. Employers, usually the womenfolk, would come down to interview applicants. Did the girl like children? Could she cook? Frequently the ever-ready assistant would be dispatched for a fortunate girl's suitcase left with her landlady. Sometimes the latter would refuse to give up the suitcase and would herself come down to the store. The girl owed her money. Who would pay her? Oh, the girl had a job! Well, the valise would go, but not before the address of the girl's situation is written out "black on white." Meanwhile the girl would be glancing apologetically at the face of her prospective employer and pluck at her hands in fear.

Then, the employer, the servant and the assistant with the suit­case would be off together in an uneven line.

We had to wait and wait because no one wanted a servant with a child.

Finally our turn came. We went to the house of a man who wore his tightly curled hair

parted in the middle. When he smiled, he kept his pink lips shut and wrinkles chased themselves across his face like the ripples on water. His wife was in the hospital and mother was to be the servant, until she returned and was well enough to take care of the house and the three children.

I don't remember seeing any children, but I do remember the peculiar arresting odor of leather in the house. Of the day, we spent there, I know nothing. At night, I remember my mother com­plained of the weariness that she felt after scrubbing those five

5 Bella Cohen Spewack

rooms and feeding the children. But we were glad to have found a temporary haven. Then she and I went to sleep.

Perhaps, two hours later, I was awakened by the voice of my mother, shrill and sharp with indignation. By the side of the bed, stood her employer...

We finished the rest of the night in the bed of Channeh Rosen­thal, after my mother had wept her story and received the pitying duckings of Channeh.

Again, we went to the Employment office and waited for work. By this time, it was summer and my mother went to work in the

house of a middle aged, sharp-eyed couple in Canarsie at S 16 a month. These people kept a counter and restaurant, serving sea food, frankfurters, pop corn, etc. They had three sons, two of whom helped in the business and a third, who was in the throes of a disease that makes people grow too much (I don't know what it is called) did nothing but sit on the beach and throw sand into the water after he had carefully molded it into a ball. There was an adopted daughter besides, a tall soft breasted girl of seventeen who had hair, the color of prune soup. She giggled when the diners talked to her and parted the wave in her pompadour with a pink, long-fingered hand.

I wandered about at my own will becoming a familiar and wel­come figure in the beer gardens that at that time were as much a part of Canarsie as the salty air. In these beer gardens, one could order a mug and see a vaudeville show on the strength of one order. I would run errands for some of the actors and actresses and be paid liberally. I would imitate them and they would throw back their heads and laugh and I was happy. Very happy. I liked to make people laugh.

It was close to the end of the summer when something happened to hasten our departure. Mother and I shared the bed with Celia, the adopted daughter of our employers. Throughout our stay, there had always been bed bugs, but on that night, they seemed to have called a mass meeting, as Celia observed with her giggle.

I fell asleep while my mother mounted watch over me. It was in one of those half veiled snatches of sleep, that I felt the need of my

Why I Wrote Comedy

The Lower East Side neighborhood where Bella Cohen Spewack grew up and which she describes in her autobiography;

photograph by J. Morrow (Community Service Society Papers)

mother's protecting hand on my uncovered feet. I opened my eyes and saw Celia sitting up against the wall, her arms crossed over her bosom, her hair falling about her like a moon mist. She wore no nightgown but a short, thin petticoat and her shin. My mother was

8 Bella Cohen Spewack

moving about on the floor feeling her way to the matches. I could see everything by the white light that came from the night sky.

"I can't find them," my mother cried. "Where are the matches? I can't find the matches."

"You want the matches?" My body stiffened. That was a new voice . . . a man's voice. "She wants the matches!" said a second new voice... a man's

voice. It was mocking and ugly. "Let 'er look," added a third new voice. It belonged to the boy

who was growing to death. And suddenly through the dark room, sped lighted matches

deftly flipped from the corners of the room. I screamed as one touched me. Celia was crying and laughing wfldly, while my mother shrieked and shouted.

"If I only had a knife, I would stick it into you, murderers! God should punish you for what you are doing to a poor orphan." The orphan was Celia.

I do not remember how the night ended and I will not ask my mother. She would probably lie about it and perhaps try to laugh not to reassure me, but herself

Three days later, we left. Celia wept when my mother left but shook her head when mother asked her to go away with us.

"Where could I go? This is the only home I know. Oh, don't worry about me. I don't belong to anyone. No one cares what hap­pens to me."

Then she began to giggle and patted the wave in her pompadour.

Why I Wrote Comedy 9

After working as a domestic in several homes, Bella's mother found work as an operator in a ladies' shirt waist shop at $7.50 a week, and Bella was brought to the Brightside Day Nursery.

The first day, I was introduced there. Miss Rachel, the matron, a broad-hipped, small faced woman patted my head and assured my mother that her baby would be well taken care of

"Haben sie kein Furcht," she said in soft, guttural German. My mother bent reverently at that and kissed her plump hand. There were many other children like me, whose mothers worked

during the day. Them, their husbands had deserted. Others were widows with memories of love words and death beds.

The nursery building, of gray stone, imperturbably restful, clean and calm eyed, stands out on Cannon Street to this day, a thing apart from its neighbors.

We children were herded into the basement by our parents, who left us there. It was gloomy but much warmer than the rooms all of us had just left. Our mothers and some fathers would risk being late and docked for a few moments to breathe in that luxuriant warmth that came from the walls.

Mothers who had infants would go upstairs to the nursery with their sleeping babes in their arms. I can imagine how they felt when the children slipping from their caressing grasp uttered low cries, opened startled eyes and reassured fell back into their clean cribs into sleep again. Sometimes, the babies cried long, unrelenting wafls and mothers would steal through our midst in the basement, their hands to their eyes.

Then Miss Fannie came down. She had long red cheeks, and black, laughing eyes with chimney black, frowsy hair that stood out about her head. Her striped blue dress with its white apron was to me the embodiment of all splendor. I later mentally fitted all my princesses with Miss Fannie's uniform.

10 Bella Cohen Spewack

Upstairs we went to don our checked pinafores that covered us from chin to knee, and some to shoe tops. Then we sang "Father, We Thank Thee."

The room here was large and yellow floored with a stained win­dow in the rear corner through which the sun never shone. Gay paper chains decorated the walls. There was also a piano, a mysteri­ous thing that cried and laughed when Miss Fannie touched it. (I had surely seen a piano in Canarsie but it had made no impression, probably out-classed by the brass instruments and the drum.) Behind this room, across a hiccough of a hall, was the dining room where long low tables and green painted "baby" chairs were lined.

Here at noon, we seated ourselves folded our hands over the table and bent our heads over our hands. Under the prompting guidance of Miss Fannie or Miss Rachel, we thanked God for many things, none of which I remember, at least not indelibly. We always had hot watery cocoa, prunes and rice served in gray, tin dishes.

I don't know how many children and babies the Brightside Day Nursery held, but they were many—too many for me to remember. So that today, I have only the memory of a pallid, gray eyed little girl of my own age and a red headed boy of six who would get under the table and pinch our legs. The girl always screamed, but would never tell the reason to Miss Fannie. When the boy pinched my legs, I kicked him.

At night, from six to seven we would file down to the basement where our clothing hung and try to play. Each time the door opened we would lift our eyes, leaping with fondness. Then, as it turned out not to be our particular mother or father, we would turn back to our sitting games and wait for the next gust of wind.

Most of the younger ones' mothers would try to drop a curtsey. My mother always tried to kiss the hand of Miss Rachel or Miss Fannie. The older ones, a little harder than the rest would take their children by the hand and throw their snapped good nights over their shoulders.

Why I Wrote Comedy 11

When it snowed, I would always slide my way home, while my mother would run after me, crying:

"Anna, Anna, you'll fall down and break a leg!"

A mother and six children in a tenement kitchen (Communit\' Ser\-icc Society Papers)

After the first week in Mrs. Pincus's basement my mother arranged to have Mrs. Pincus wake me and gi\'e me hot milk, while mother hurried off to the shop.

From the first day that this duty fell upon her, the old lady took a particular delight in pulling my ears to make me open my eyes. But I clung to sleep and closed my eyes again. With a stifled indignant cry that set her bow on the wig all atremble, she pulled the covers from me and dragged me to the floor, kneading her fingers into my arms and back. By this time I was awake and aching.

12 Bella Cohen Spewack

Her daughter Clara was asleep in the next room. I could hear her rasping snores as I dressed with chilled fingers. At that moment, I envied stupid Clara, lying with her hand over her nose and her eye­lids partially drawn over her eyes. At the end of the second week, Mrs. Pincus began taking my ribbons from me with the order that I keep my mouth shut.

I did not tell my mother. She had her own troubles. Her mother was imploring her in bi-monthly letters to send more money. A younger sister was to be married. The dowry had to be provided. Besides, I was afraid that we would have to move back to those Peckacha children.

Mrs. Pincus's blows were preferable to their slimy mouths, I felt instinctively.

So I watched my ribbons disappear into the secretive looking bundles that Mrs. Pincus stored under her bed until one night I could stand it no longer. There was a bruise on my back that burned me as if I had been branded by a red hot iron.

My mother turned me over anxiously and began to cry. She cried easily.

"Honeyle you are black and blue and your skin is peeled from your bones!" she exclaimed. Just then Mrs. Pincus entered from the rear room. My mother pointed to my uncovered back while her tears fell hot upon it.

"Look—iVlrs. Pincus. Look! Would you believe that a kindergar­ten could do such things," she cried out. I had not said the kinder­garten had inflicted those marks on my body, but my mother had already decided that for herself Who else, but the kindergarten? It was the kindergarten. Burned it should be!

My mother rubbed some salve on my back and turned me over, crooning and moaning. Then she went to sleep. I tried to whisper to her and nudged her but she was exhausted from work and the unex­pected sight of my blemished back. I lay awake all night so that I should not miss my mother in the morning, but I fell asleep. When I awoke my mother had already left.

Why I Wrote Comedy 13

Mrs. Pincus did not attempt to hasten my dressing in the usual way although she did not omit the usual tweaking of my ears. She even permitted me to wear the new ribbon my mother had brought me the night before. I drew back suspiciously from an attempted pat. Mrs. Pincus might have changed her mind before her hand rested on my hair.

All day I was unusually silent in the kindergarten. Since I was excused from any of the games that required much exercise, because of my back, I had plenty of time to brood on my decision to tell my mother the truth. When she came that night, she sullenly refused to return the "good evening" that Miss Fannie extended her. Her lips began to tremble. I was afraid she would cry and 1 did not want Miss Fannie to see my mother cry! So on the pretense of having her help me locate my coat and tam o' shanter, I took her to the wardrobe closet and told her the truth.

She was so stunned that for a moment, she could do nothing but stare at me.

"You tell the truth?" she said. "She's got the ribbons too," I added. This was too much. My mother rushed from me with the tale of

my tortures to Miss Fannie and Miss Rachel. "Now, if you can't trust a religious woman who wears a wig,

whom can you trust?" she tearfully demanded. One of the mothers who had crowded about her, told her of a

Mrs. Forman who lived in a rear house opposite who would be glad to have us board with her.

My mother immediately went across with the woman to meet Mrs. Forman, who proved to be a litde woman of fifty with curling black bangs over her forehead. She had a long nose and thin little pale lips that she sucked continually. She put her arms around me and asked my mother where she had gotten such a pretty daughter.

My mother left me in her care and went to get our belongings from the basement of Mrs. Pincus. In about a half hour she returned, her cheeks streaked with tears and her eyes blazing with

14 Bella Cohen Spewack

stored up wrath. Two small boys followed her with our featherbed and valises. As she paid them, she burst out into wild curses, invok­ing all the black years with their pestilences to fall upon the head of the pious, watery-eyed Mrs. Pincus.

Mrs. Forman transferred her pats to my mother's head. With every murmured word of sympathy, she screwed up her funny little grey eyes until they seemed to be just mere scintillating pin points of light. Why dwell on unhappy things that are past? Better to forget . . . God had already punished Mrs. Pincus. Did my mother know

that Mrs. Pincus had had an older daughter, who had run away from her to Philadelphia? Yes with a man. And her mother had never heard from her since.

"Beauty is like a curse," she said in her little voice. It came as if she were pressing her lips against a knot-hole in a fence. "If her daugh­ter had not been so beautiful, she would still be at the side of her mother. Now, my daughter no one will ever take from me. She is so ugly."

And Mrs. Forman was truthfully open-eyed. Yetta, her daughter, was a red haired, long nosed, slanty eyed girl with round shoulders and a pitiful desire to be in style. Her eyelashes and brows were the color of her freckles of which she had a large ill proportioned num­ber. She later married—or rather was married to a widower with three children, who wiped his nose on his sleeve.

© Estate of Bella Spewack, Published with the permission of the estate Ciommunity Service Society

photographs reproduced with peritiission.

Generations of Service to the Tsars

The Benckendorffs NATHANIEL KNIGHT

A fter seventy years gathering dust in an English attic, the papers of Russia's illustrious Benckendorff family have made their way to Columbia's Bakhmeteff archive. With

the long process of cataloging near completion, this large collection will soon be open to the public—an event eagerly awaited by scholars of Russian history and diplomacy throughout the world.

The papers belonged to Alexander Constantinovich Bencken­dorff the last tsarist ambassador to the Coun of St. James's; all of his personal and professional correspondence located in the embassy at the time of his death is included. And by fortunate hap­penstance, Benckendorff also had with him the archive of his father, Constantin Constantinovich Benckendorff, a soldier and diplomat who died in 1858. Thus the collection as a whole covers a broad timespan from the 1790s to the 1920s, allowing the historian to observe how the ideal of service to the tsars was expressed over the course of five generations.

Although the Benckendorffs devoted their lives to serving the Russian state, they, as their name suggests, were not Russian. The family was part of the Baltic German nobility, descendants of the teutonic knights who swept into the area in the Middle Ages only to be halted by Alexander Nevsky and his stalwart Novgorodians on the ice of Lake Chud. By the time Peter the Great took over Latvia and Lithuania from the Swedes in the aftermath of the Great Northern War, a Benckendorff was ensconced as mayor of Riga. The family quickly reached an understanding with the new rulers of the Baltic, thus beginning a tradition of service that would con­tinue undiminished straight up to 1917.

The Benckendorffs' Germanic roots were a critical factor in determining their identity. Despite their prominent position, they never fully assimilated the Russian culture. Apart from the last gen­eration before the revolution, the Benckendorffs preferred not to

15

16 Nathaniel Knight

use Russian as their primary language. Russian was used occasion­ally for matters related to service, but personal relations were car­ried on solely in French or German. The Benckendorffs' lack of a cultural identification with Russia was offset by the ease with which

Count Alexander Constantinovich Benckendorff, last Russian ambassador to the Court of St, James's,

ca, 191J

they were integrated into aristocratic circles throughout Europe— particularly after a series of well-planned marriages connected the Benckendorffs with some of the oldest and most prestigious fami­lies on the continent. Given their connections, diplomacy was the natural career of choice. The Benckendorffs held a variety of posts

Generations of Service to the Tsars 17

throughout the eighteenth century, but their real break came about toward the end of the century when Christoph Benckendorff mar­ried Julianna Schifling, the personal companion and childhood friend of the Tsarina Maria Fedorovna, a German princess married to the future Tsar Paul I. Maria Fedorovna took an active interest in the children of her close friend and endeavored to advance their careers in any way possible.

Of the three Benckendorff children, the most colorful was Dorothea, better known by her married name of Princess Eleven. At the age of sixteen she had been awarded the prestigious post of lady-in-waiting to Maria Fedorovna. Soon after, she was married to Prince Christoph Eleven, the offspring of yet another prominent Baltic noble family. Although his background was in the military. Prince Eleven decided to try his hand at diplomacy and in 1809 was appointed ambassador to Berlin. Three years later he was trans­ferred to London, where he served for the next twenty-two years. Prince Eleven turned out to be a mediocre diplomat at best, but his term as ambassador was considered a great success, largely due to the talent and energy of his wife. With her beauty, charm, and for­midable intelligence. Princess Lieven was able to navigate the treacherous waters of regency court politics, winningthe friendship and trust of individuals from the most disparate of factions. Among her foremost achievements was her intimate friendship with Prince Metternich of Austria during the period when he was at the height of his power. Other friends included the Duke of Wellington, Viscount Castlereagh, Earl Grey, and Talleyrand.

In 18 34, Prince Lieven was recalled to Russia and took a reluctant Dorothea with him. But after a miserable year in which her two youngest sons died of scarlet fever, she obtained permission to return to Western Europe alone, ostensibly for health reasons. Set­tling in Paris, she soon reestablished many of her old connections and started a lively salon. When her husband wrote from Italy in 1837 requesting that she join him, she refused on the grounds that her health would not permit her to make the journey. The tsar, who hated everything to do with France and had ordered Prince Lieven

18 Nathaniel Knight

to bring his wayward wife back to Russia, was angered by Dorothea's obstinacy. Therefore he forbade the prince from having any funher contact with his wife, and the two never met again— Prince Lieven died soon after. Firmly ensconced in Paris with all ties to Russia broken, Princess Lieven became the companion and lover of the prominent French politician and historian Francois Guizot. Ever the aristocrat, the princess reportedly turned down her lover's marriage proposal on the grounds that she could not bear to be known as "Madame Guizot." The idyllic splendor of her Parisian life was interrupted only once, in 1848, when she and Guizot were forced to flee the revolution in Paris and seek refuge in England. They were able to return to Paris in 18 50, and Princess Lieven died a few years later with Guizot at her side.

Princess Eleven's brother. Count Alexander Khristoforovich Benckendorff was perhaps the most renowned member of the fam­ily. He began his career as a cavalry officer and served with distinc­tion during the Napoleonic wars. But Alexander Khristoforovich discovered his true calling soon after the ascension of the Emperor Nicholas I to the throne, thanks to a memorandum he had written a few years earlier to the previous tsar, Alexander I, warning of the existence of dangerous secret societies among the younger genera­tion of officers. His memorandum was ignored at the time, but Benckendorff was vindicated in December 1825 when a group of officers from some of the most prestigious regiments refused to rec­ognize the new tsar and organized an unsuccessful revolt against Nicholas calling for liberty, justice, and a constitution. Bencken­dorff made certain that his earlier memorandum was brought to the attention of Nicholas, who was quick to recognize in Alexander Khristoforovich a dedicated and loyal supporter. So impressed was Nicholas with Benckendorffs abilities that he entrusted him with the task of organizing a police force to wipe out all traces of subver­sion in Russia. Benckendorffs gendarmes—known as the Third Section of His Majesty's Chancery—came to epitomize the reac­tionary spirit of the Nicholaevan era, and Benckendorff himself gained notoriety as the personal censor of Russia's greatest poet.

Generations of Service to the Tsars 19

Alexander Pushkin. But the letters contained in the Columbia col­lection show a different side to Alexander Khristoforovich's person­ality. Writing to his nephew, Benckendorff comes across as a kind and concerned family man who took pains to insure that his young relative received a start in life commensurate with his proud heri­tage. When Alexander Khristoforovich died in 1844, he was deeply mourned by his family and eulogized as a force for harmony and reconciliation.

Benckendorffs nephew. Count Constantin Constantinovich, the central figure in the first part of the collection, was orphaned early in life and adopted by his uncle, from whom he inherited the title of Count. He was educated at the elite Corps of Pages and, thanks to his uncle's influence, launched what promised to be a brilliant mili­tary and diplomatic career. He began as aide-de-camp to the Minis­ter of War and later to the emperor himself, and he served on three different military campaigns in the Caucasus. In 1845, his recogni­zance pany was set upon by a band of tribesmen. In the battle that ensued, Constantin was severely wounded. For weeks he hovered on the brink of death, and even after his survival was ensured, he never fully recovered: almost certainly the nervous disorder that afflicted him ten years later and caused his death was a product of his war wounds.

When he had recovered enough to resume service, Constantin accepted a post as military attache at the Russian embassy in Berlin. It was here that he met and fell in love with Louise von Croy-Dulmen, a beautiful young princess from an ancient line of German nobles. The romance of Constantin and Louise took place against the backdrop of the revolution of 1848. In March of that year, radi­cal crowds took control of Berlin and forced the erratic and ineffec­tual king, Frederick William IV, to promise political reforms. To avoid the unrest, Louise and her family fled the capital, while Con­stantin stayed at the embassy feverishly writing intelligence reports to be read by the tsar. When the situation calmed down, Constantin and Louise were reunited and soon married. Eventually Constan-tin's career brought the couple to Stuttgart, where he served first as

20 Nathaniel Knight

envoy and then as ambassador to the court at Wiintemberg. The voluminous correspondence between husband and wife from this period provides a detailed record of the tumultuous events going on around them as well as an intimate portrayal of personal relations within the aristocracy. During their years in Stuttgart and Berlin, the couple had four children: Alexander (1849), Paul (185 3), Nathalie (1854), and 01ga(1857). But injanuary 1858, their happy existence was shattered by the death of Constantin as a result of a mysterious nervous disorder, the progress of which is graphically illustrated by the deterioration of his handwriting in the months before his death.

Following Constantin's death, Louise moved the family to Paris and enrolled the children in French schools. From then on, Louise had as little as possible to do with Russia, although she continued to receive a substantial income from the family's hereditary estate in Tambov province. She eventually settled in Austria, where she lived until her death in 1890. Louise's daughters did not maintain much connection with their Russian roots, but Alexander and Paul Benckendorff had family tradition to uphold. On reaching adoles­cence, the boys, who barely spoke a word of Russian, were sent to study at their father's alma mater in St. Petersburg under the watch­ful eye of the family financial advisor, Alexander Abramovich Peretz.

Both boys showed considerable talent and on graduation from the Corps of Pages began their rise to prominent positions within the Russian government. Paul was drawn toward service in the court, and by the turn of the century he had risen to the post of chief marshal of protocol—a position that brought him into daily contact with the royal family. His letters to his brother, in which he reports events in St. Petersburg with devastating frankness, provide a vivid portrait of the last years of the Romanovs in all their gran­deur and disarray. After the February revolution of 1917, Paul remained with the deposed tsar and his family until they were sent off to Siberia and their eventual murder at the hands of the Bolshe­viks. Stranded by revolution and civil war in Petrograd, Paul and his

Generations of Service to the Tsars 21

wife, Mary, were stripped of all their wealth and suffered enormous deprivation. In 1921 they attempted to escape to Estonia, but the strains of the journey were too much for the elderly man. While awaiting processing at the Estonian border, Paul came down with a

\]^|R

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HHHI • J

^•SI^^IM

REJ^^^^

• • H P ' . W

Alexander Constantino\'ich and Sophie Petrovna Benckendorff in the Russian embassy, London, ca, 1915

severe flu and died shortly thereafter. His reminiscences of life with the deposed tsar were published in the mid-twenties at the behest of his widow and relatives.

Alexander Constantinovich Benckendorff followed in the foot­steps of his father and great-uncle by building a career within the diplomatic corps. With his impeccable knowledge of European Ian-

22 Nathaniel Knight

guages, his innate sense of tact and extensive aristocratic connec­tions, he was eminently qualified for his chosen profession. After serving for two decades in Austria and Denmark, Benckendorff was appointed ambassador to Great Britain in 1903. At the time, rela­tions between Britain and Russia were anything but cordial. The situation was particularly exacerbated by the Russo-Japanese War and by a series of clashes between British ships and a Russian fleet en route to the Far East. Benckendorff succeeded in smoothing out these differences and was one of the primary architects of the Anglo-Russian alliance in the years leading up to World War I. His papers contain a wealth of materials related to pre-war diplomacy.

Benckendorffs personal correspondence is no less interesting. While on duty in London, Benckendorff depended heavily on his wife, Sophie, who never missed the winter "season" in St. Peters­burg, to keep him informed about events back home. Sophie, a woman of indomitable energy and willpower, performed her duties admirably, writing thousands of letters filled with the latest news and gossip. Among other things, she describes "Bloody Sunday" (the shooting of protesting workers in front of the Winter Palace by tsarist troops injanuary 1905), the opening of the Russian Duma, or legislature, and the impact of the peasant disorders of 1905. For several years she kept a running tally of summary executions in the countryside by punitive detachments. During World War 1, Sophie and her daughter Natalie organized a committee to aid Russian pris­oners of war and in the process assembled a unique collection of eyewitness accounts describing conditions in German camps. In addition to her philanthropic activities, Sophie Benckendorff was a patron of the arts and corresponded with such eminent writers as Maurice Baring, Paul Valery, and H. G. Wells. After the death of her husband in 1917, Sophie remained in London and was soon faced with an onslaught of relatives and acquaintances fleeing the turmoil in Russia. Unlike most emigres, Sophie was financially secure; her family, the Shuvalovs, was one of the richest in all of Russia, and she and her husband had invested heavily in foreign

Generations of Service to the Tsars 23

securities. This put her in a position to assist her less fortunate rela­tives, and so naturally she received a great deal of mail full of tales of hardship and dislocation vividly depicting the emigres' plight.

Some of the most dramatic material in the collection concerns Alexander Benckendorffs son Constantin. Cony—as he was known to family and friends—broke new ground within the Benck­endorff family by choosing to serve in the Russian Navy. This brought him into the thick of conflict during the Russo-Japanese War. A participant in the ill-fated defense of Port Arthur, he was eventually captured by the Japanese and spent a year living a remarkably carefree life as a prisoner of war boarded with a Japa­nese family and treated with the utmost respect.

Returning to Russia a year later. Cony settled on the family estate, Sosnovka, in Tambov province and took up life as a country gentle­man. But with the onset of World War I, Cony returned to the Navy and eventually settled into a position as a supply officer in the northern city of Arkhangel'sk, spending the war years there in a daze of frenetic activity interrupted only by the deaths of his brother, Pierre, in 1915 and his father in 1917, Cony left Arkhan­gel'sk soon after his father's death, and after a few aimless months in St. Petersburg he accepted a position as liaison to the foreign mili­tary attaches at general staff headquarters near the front line. But fighting with Germany was at a lull, and although he was shocked and bewildered by the Bolshevik revolution, most of his time was spent, as he put it, "vegetating in a small house" with a few friends.

After the treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the official disbanding of the Russian army. Cony returned to Tambov with the intention of liv­ing a peaceful life on his estate, but when Bolshevik agitators arrived at the village denouncing the "bloodsucking slaveowners," the peas­ants were forced to expel him. Eventually he made his way to Mos­cow, where he was mobilized by the Bolsheviks to participate in dip­lomatic negotiations and advise in the rebuilding of the Navy. At the end of the Civil War, he elected to stay in Russia and continue his service in the Navy on the rationale that his loyalty to Russia

24 Nathaniel Knight

outweighed his distaste for the Bolsheviks—a common attitude at the time. Unfortunately, circumstances would not allow Cony to continue his Naval career. On two or three occasions he was arrested by the secret police on suspicion of spying, and by 1922 he

Constantin Alexandrovich ("Cony") and Pierre Alexandrovich Benckendorff at the familv estate, Sosnovka, ca, 1900

had come to know Moscow's Butyrsky prison all too well. In the end his superiors at the Naval Ministry decided it was simply too politically risky to keep him on.

Unemployed and at risk of being arrested yet again, he was saved by his lifelong love for music. Cony was an enthusiastic amateur flutist, and when he lost his job with the Navy, friends arranged to have him join a symphony orchestra, thus providing him with a modicum of security. Here he fell in love with Maria Korchinskaia, an accomplished harpist. They were married in 1923, and their first

Generations of Service to the Tsars 25

child, a daughter, was born soon after. What had been tolerable for a single man became increasingly hard to cope with as a family, and the couple began to plan their escape from Russia. In a sense, they were among the first Soviet defectors: a concert tour through Europe featuring a program of flute and harp duets provided the pretext for the couple to reach England, where they were joyfully greeted by their relatives.

The materials described above are only part of the collection. There are literally thousands of documents from a broad range of correspondents providing almost endless possibilities for research. Topics range from the first Russian diplomatic expedition to China in 1806, to the administration of Finland at the turn of the century, to French aristocratic refugees in the 1790s and Russian refugees in the 1920s. But viewed as a whole, it is the collection's continuity and comprehensiveness that makes it unique. From the mass of cor­respondence, both private and official, a nuanced picture emerges of a distinct and influential milieu that bridged the gap between Russia and the West. Inextricably linked through culture, language, and kinship to the European aristocracy, the Benckendorffs were bound to Russia by family tradition and a value system that stressed honor, loyalty, and service above all else. Over the course of a cen­tury the family evolved, with each generation reflecting the chang­ing historical and cultural environment, but the fundamental core of values at the heart of the Benckendorffs' way of life remained intact.

"For My Own Pleasure" Frank Akschul's Overbrook Press

o\ W. GREGORY GALLAGHER

verbrook Press was founded in 19 34 by Frank Altschul, a I prominent Wall Street investment banker, whose interest in printing began when he was a child. One Christmas his

mother gave him a toy press, but ink was soon all over the house and the press was returned to the store. He retained his interest in print­ing and soon after his marriage set up a small press in his New York apartment. But it was not long before it, too, had to be relinquished when the space it occupied was needed for his growing family. Years later, Altschul discovered an explanation for his avocation: no less than ten of his Bohemian ancestors had been printers.

Thus, in 1934, when Margaret B. Evans, who had previously been associated with August Heckscher's Ashlar Press, approached Altschul with the idea of starting a private press, he responded enthusiastically. A former pigpen on his country estate, Overbrook Farm, in Stamford, Connecticut, was converted to a print shop, and a secondhand Colts Armory press was purchased along with a vari­ety of type and a treasury of papers, many dating from before the First Worid War.

Evans became both designer and compositor for the new press until she was succeeded in 1944 by John Logan, who stayed on until his death in 1967. When Evans came to Overbrook, she brought with her master pressman John MacNamara, who remained with the press until his death in 1955, after which the pressman's job was filled by Frederick Warns. The Overbrook staff were skilled and devoted employees who ran the press and did most of the design work, except for special projects when noted artists were hired. Altschul decided what to print and to whom to distribute the printed works. Overbrook imprints were seldom sold; most were given to family members and to friends and acquaintances, both business and social. Some works were sent to his clubs and to schools and libraries with which he was associated.

26

"For My Own Pleasure" 27

Overbrook Press was a vehicle for Akschul's interest in the art of printing, and it also served other aspects of his life: his family, his support of his college and clubs, and his interest in chess, politics, and literature. Greeting cards, bookplates, invitations, dinner pro-

Frank Altschul, toundcr and proprietor ot 0\'crbrook Press (Blackstone Studio.s)

grams, and memorial booklets for family and friends issued regu­larly from the press. When Akschul's sister Edith was the subject of the society page, the article was reprinted by the press, Edith was married to New York State Governor Herbert H. Lehman, and Akschul's brother-in-law was the author or subject of nearly a dozen Overbrook titles. Other members of these families became

28 W Gregory Gallagher

subjects for pieces, including Charles and Julius Altschul; Judge Irving Lehman and Peter Lehman; and Philip J., Phyllis W , and Howard Lehman Goodhart.

Altschul used the press to support his alma mater, Yale. He founded the Yale Library Associates, for whom he printed Addresses Commemorating the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Wil­liam Morris (\9'i 5), which was co-authored by Akschul's friend and former mentor, Chauncey B. Tinker, and Carl P. Rollins, Printer to the University. In addition to his usual team of Evans and MacNa­mara, Altschul hired Anna Simons to design woodcut initials and Valenti Angelo to draw the border for the book. The press pro­duced two additional pieces for the Library Associates, and a num­ber of essays, speeches, and reports for other Yale bodies on which Altschul served. For Yale's Pierson College, of which he was an associate fellow, he published a war memorial book, Pierson College: In Memorium, 1941-1946 (1947), and the two-volume history of the college, Pierson College: The First Decade, 19?}-194i (1944), which was illustrated by Thomas M. Cleland.

Altschul was a member of the distinguished Marshall Chess Club in the 1920s and 1930s. In a letter to fellow chess enthusiast and Yale scholar W K. Wimsatt, he recalls, "my own interest in chess problems dates from schooldays when I used to play occasionally in interscholastic tournaments, and I from time to time composed modest two-movers." Altschul felt that books on chess were "abominably printed," and in the early 1940s he published a series of eight chess books of superior typography, one of which, A Sketch­book of American Chess Problematists, was selected in 1942 by the American Institute of Graphic Arts as one of the Fifty Books of the Year.

Overbrook Press also published humorous pieces. One Hundred Per Cent American (1939), an essay by Quentin Reynolds, had a printer's device by Valenti Angelo depicting three pigs looking over a fence. It was the only press publication to bear the Ikerally true imprint "Pig Pen Press," in wry aflusion to the earlier use of the building the press now occupied. Another humorous piece. Three

"For My Own Pleasure' 29

Sketches by Mark Twain, was, accordingto its colophon, "printed for our Senators and Congressmen, who, in these troubled times [ 1946], may find much needed distraction in the refreshing humor of Mark Twain." The tongue-in-cheek In Praise of Polygamy {19 5 7) by Francis T P. Plimpton was so popular that the first printing of one thousand copies soon ran out and numerous reprintings were required.

f?,: s-<- :?^?^

aat ff'm I III

• ' i ^ : > ^ ' ;

O\crbrook farm, 1929. ti\"c \ears before the founding of the prcs:

During the war, Altschul, a devout anglophile, printed speeches and broadsides emphasizing the historical and cultural connection between Great Britain and the United States. Later, in 1953, as a member of the English-Speaking Union, he was asked to print a book of names of subscribers to a scholarship fund honoring the late King George VI {Donors to the King George VI Memorial Fund), a coronation gift for Elizabeth II. For his efforts, Altschul had the honor of presenting the book to the queen.

One of the more unusual emphases of Overbrook Press was the printing of political tracts. They account for well over a third of Overbrook titles, but even more interesting is the unexpected care given to this kind of rhetoric, equal to the same high standards

30 W. Gregory Gallagher

applied to other areas of Overbrook publication. A powerful and respected man in the financial community, Altschul felt he had a part to play in national and international affairs, influenced by the example of his brother-in-law, Herbert H. Lehman, with whom he had a close relationship.

World War II and the cold war that followed provided Altschul with many opportunities to print scores of essays, speeches, and articles and to distribute them to state and federal lawmakers, to the judiciary (Altschul was on a first name basis with more than one justice of the Supreme Court), and to important persons in finance, education, publishing, and journalism—in short, to policymakers and to those who could influence them.

The attractive packaging of these tracts encouraged recipients to give more consideration to the opinions they expressed than they otherwise might have. No doubt Akschul's political connections made it imprudent to ignore his mailings, but recipients were also flattered by his attention. And the authors, too, were happy that their pieces received such fine printing. On occasion Altschul would make editorial changes to the piece being reprinted; Dean Acheson was one author who received such treatment, and he seems to have genuinely appreciated it.

To say that the list of authors of the political pieces that Altschul reprinted reads like a Who's Who of the period would be to under­state the case; their names were and still are household words. A partial list includes: Winston S. Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Felix Frankfurter, John Kenneth Galbraith, John F Kennedy, Walter Lippmann, Douglas MacArthur, Reinhold Niebuhr, Dean Rusk, John Steinbeck, Adlai Stevenson, Dorothy Thomp.son, Earl Warren, and Woodrow Wilson.

It was in belles-lettres, however, that Overbrook achieved its dis­tinction as a fine press, publishing thirty-five works of literature. The early years of the press were its most productive. As the first major work of the press, Altschul wanted to publish a collection of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry. (Its first publication was a type specimen book.) He wrote to Millay for permission, citing as quali-

"For My Own Pleasure' 31

t)pectmenoftppes 22

30

16

CLEAR reason

rules design

RESTRAI NT MAY GIFE fnore than expression

Page from the first publication of Overbrook Press, The Types. Borders. Rules & Devices of the Press

Arranged as a Keepsake. 19 34

fications for such a project his presidency of the American Instkute of Graphic Arts and his chairmanship of the publications commit­tee of the Grolier Club. As compensation, Millay was to receive an unspecified number of copies of the edkion. On the advice of her editor, however, she rejected the proposal. Altschul then turned to his old favorite, George Meredith. Earlier he had printed a few of

32 W Gregory Gallagher

the sixteen-line sonnets from Modern Love on the press he once had in his New York apartment. Now, in 1942, he printed the complete sequence in Caslon Old Face type on handmade paper, bound in black cloth with gold letters.

Many noted book designers and illustrators contributed to the success of these works of belles-lettres. Valenti Angelo provided the title page vignette for the next major effort of the press. The Lady's New-Year's-Gift or: Advice to a Daughter (1934) by George Savile, lord marquess of Halifax. Angelo also provided decorative pieces for six other Overbrook imprints. W A. Dwiggins did the typogra­phy and illustration of One More Spring (19 3 5) by Robert Nathan, the first of nine Overbrook titles that were selected by the American Institute of Graphic Arts for Fifty Books of the Year awards.

For Overbrook's edition of Inland Voyage {\9SS) by Robert Louis Stevenson, French artist Jean Hugo (grandson of the novelist) was commissioned to retrace Stevenson's voyage through the canals of the Low Countries. The sketches he made on this journey were used as the twenty-three colored chapter headings of the book, another Fifty Books of the Year winner. The following year, Bruce Rogers designed the initials for Overbrook's folio-size Poems of Shakespeare.

Another noted book designer and illustrator, Rudolph Ruzicka, did wood engravings and decorations for five Overbrook titles. In his design for Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince and Other Tales (19 3 6), he used blue paper boards with green decorations and a col­ophon device in the same colors. The combination was a favorite with Ruzicka, and he used it again for the Chinese print-like deco­rations he made for Addresses Delivered Before the House of Representa­tives and the Senate of the United States (1943) by Madame Chaing Kai-Shek.

The artist most closely associated with Overbrook Press was Thomas Maidand Cleland. An old friend of Akschul's, in 1935 he did the typography for the edition of Richard Aldington's A Dream in the Luxembourg, and the following year he did the title page illus­tration and a heraldic device for Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental

' For My Own Pleasure " 33

Journey. Over the next twenty years, Cleland illustrated several more pieces for Overbrook, including Pierson College: The First Decade, 19S3-1945 (1944); a pamphlet on the BBC by John Crosby; Akschul's 1951 Christmas card, for which he made two drawings of Overbrook Farm; and the King George VI Memorial Fund book (1953). In addition, the press published two pieces on the graphic arts that Cleland wrote as well as illustrated: "Progress" in the Graphic Arts (1949) and 2 Letters in Praise of Progress in the Typographic and the Social Arts... (1950).

Cleland's most important work for Overbrook is its masterpiece, L'Abbe Prevost's Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. Altschul and Cleland decided that this edition would be a unique example of the art and craft of bookmaking. Work was started on the project in 1952, when Cleland was seventy-two years old. Cleland's illustrations appear on forty-two pages and "are not reproductions... as there were no colored originals from which they could be reproduced.. . ." Each illustration, in each copy of the book, Cleland claimed, was an original work of art: "each is an autographic print by an artist... the colors made and applied by his own hand." The process used was silk screen, an intricate and time-consuming procedure. Each of the colors was printed separately. At least six and often as many as ten different workings were required for each picture. Not only was the process entirely and solely con­ducted by Cleland, but he also formulated the colors and made all the equipment needed for production.

Cleland was a perfectionist and his work on Manon Lescaut was obsessive. It was projected to take from one-and-a-half to two years to complete, for which Cleland was to receive a thousand dollars a month from Altschul, It actually "consumed more than six years of unremitting labor, fourteen to sixteen hours per day, seven days per week." Cleland was given to exaggeration, but even a schedule half as arduous would have been taxing for a man of Cleland's age. Indeed, halfway along he suffered a mild stroke, which delayed the project for several months. It was finally finished in 1958. A hand­some, large quarto, handset in Caslon Old Face type and printed (in

34 W. Gregory Gallaghe\

du sujet qui m'luncnc, Lt p;ir quel nipport j'ai i":ivant;igc dc con-tiaitrc \'<)tre nom.

J e k priai dc medonncr Ic temps Jc In lire I1:UIK un cabaret voisin. Elle vouluE me suivre, et ellc me conseilla de dcmander unc chmn-bre a part.

— Dc qui vient cette Icttre? lui dis~je en montant. Elle me remit a la lecture. Je reconnus hi main de

Manon. Voici a peu pres ce qu'elle me marquait: G... M.,. I'avait re^ue avec une policesse et une ma-

J j ^ gnilicenLe ludelade toutcsses idccb Iirivaiti-omhlLedepre­sents, il lui 1 usut en\ isagtr un sort de reine Elle m'a^sunit neanraomb qu tilt, ne m'ou-

t bliiK pis dtns Lttte nouielk splendent, miis qut, n ivant

One of Thomas M. Cleland's illustrations for Histoire du Chevalier des

Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by LAbhe Prevost, 1958

French) on H a m m a r and Anvil paper, the volumes are bound in full

brown morocco, stamped in gold on the spine and with marbled

endpapers. Each is enclosed in a brown linen slipcase; two hundred

copies were printed.

' For My Own Pleasure " 35

Manon Lescaut cost Altschul "what was left of half a million dol­lars of income after taxes." He was proud of his expensive master­piece, and in addition to the usual select list of family, friends, clubs, and schools, he sent copies to major libraries, including New York Public Library, J. Pierpont Morgan Library, Library of Congress, British Museum, Bodleian Library, and Bibliotheque Nationale. A few copies were sold by Duschnes at $250 each.

In 1967 Overbrook published its last major literary work, an edi­tion of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome. Thereafter the activities of the press began to wind down. John Logan, the compositor, died that year, and Altschul felt his replacement lacked imagination. In addition, the pressman, Frederick Warns, wanted to retire. Altschul, approaching his eighty-third birthday, closed the press in 1969. It had been a long run for a private press, thirty-five years and 269 titles, and a good one in terms of the quality of its work. Altschul described Overbrook Press as "a private press which I ran for my own pleasure and for the pleasure and benefit of my friends." That purpose was well accomplished and has left a legacy of works of enduring quality and craftsmanship.

Our Growing Collections RUDOLPH ELLENBOGEN

Barnouw gift. Professor Emeritus Erik Barnouw has donated for inclusion in his papers more than 250 items, primarily correspon­dence dating from the 1920s to 1989, relating to his career in the School of Dramatic Arts at Columbia and in radio, television, and film. Among the correspondents are Pearl Buck, Norman Corwin, Paddy Chayefsky, Frances Flaherty, Paul Horgan, Akira Iwasaki, S. Krishnaswamy, Pare Lorentz, Bernard Malamud, Satyajit Ray, Mrs. Paul Robeson, and Virgil Thomson, as well as many other writers and executives of the broadcast industry.

Becksongift. Mr. Kari E. Beckson (A.M., 1952; Ph.D., 1959) has donated to the Libraries a collection of forty-seven books and pam­phlets of English literature, dating from the 1890s to 1990. Among the books in his gift are: three inscribed by Arthur Symons, Amoris Victima, 1940, London: A Book of Aspects, 1909, and Cities and Sea Coast Islands; and two from the library of Martin Seeker by Owen Seaman, The Battle of the Bays, W 9 6, !i.nd In Cap & Bells, 1900.Also included in the gift is John Guille Millais's biography of his father. The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, 1905, inscribed by Ada Leverson to Ernest Leverson, and a volume of The Pageant, 1897, which has contributions by Austin Dobson, Laurence Hous-man. Max Beerbohm, Ernest Dowson, and Lionel Johnson, and art by Gustav Moreau, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Walter Crane, Charles Ricketts, and Lucien Pissarro.

Blaugift. Mr. Raphael David Blau (A.B., 193 3; A.M., 1938 TC.) has presented a copy of a poetry examination, "Exercises in Judging Poetry" by Allan Abbott and M. R. Trabue, that was completed by Richard L. Simon on May 9, 1920, while Simon was still a student at Columbia. Mr. Blau's gift is accompanied by his 1991 letter to Columbia Magazine telling the story of his discovery of the exam in 1939 and Simon's June 9, 1939, letter to Blau regarding his mem­ory of the examination.

36

Our Growing Collections 3 7

Boyer gift. Mrs . Marjorie Boyer (A.M. , 1934; Ph .D. , 1958) pre­

sented to the Libraries 3,861 books from her library and from the

libraryofherlatehusband, CariB.Boyer(A.B., 1928; A.M., 1929; Ph.D., 1939). The books relate primarily to the history of mathe­matics and to medieval history, art, and music. George Boole's Treatise on Differential Equations, Cambridge, 1865, Leonhard Euler's Introductio in Analysin Infinitorum, Lugduni, 1797,Johann Christoph Heilbronner's Historia Matheseos Universae, Lipsiae, 1742, and Thucydides ' s Histoire de la Guerre des Peloponnesiens,

1600, are among the ninety-five rare volumes donated. In addition, there is a volume of more than thirty pieces of American sheet music, the majority of which date from the first half of the nine­teenth century. A special arrangement has been made for the sale to Columbia graduate students of all materials not selected for the Libraries.

Coover gift. A rare Latin-Chinese grammar, Etienne Fourmont's Linguae Sinarum Mandarinicae Hieroglyphicae Grammatica Duplex,

Latine, & cum Characteribus Sinesium, Paris, 1742, has been pre­

sented by Mr. Christopher Coover (M.S. in L.S,, 1983). In addi­tion, Mr. Coover has donated two letters that provide insight into the seventeenth-century world of books and literary matters, the first from the philologist Nicolaus Heinsius to Theodore Rykius, The Hague, 8 December 1666, and the second from the philoso­pher and man-of-letters Pierre Bayle to Emery Bigot, Rotterdam, 30 May 1689. Mr. Coover's gift also contains Robert Louis Steven­son's copy with his bookplate of George Saintsbury's Miscellaneous Essays, London, 1892, inscribed by the author to Stevenson; T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, New York, 1943, oneofthe 788 copiesofthe suppressed first American edition; and William Robertson's Phraseologia Generalis, Cambridge, 1681, a collection of Latin phrases that continued to be reprinted as late as 1824.

Haverstick gift. Mrs. lola Haverstick (A.B., 1946 B.; A.M., 1965) has donated twenty-two first editions by Louis Auchincloss, virtu­ally all of which are inscribed or signed. In the earliest, Sybil, pub-

3 8 Rudolph Ellenbogen

lishedin 1952, Auchincloss has written, "For lola & John who have followed Sybil from her eariiest appearance as Maud." In 1962 the Saturday Review published Mrs. Haverstick's interview with Auchincloss, and he inscribed his Portrait of a Brownstone, 1962,

Chum

Kuc

Kuon

Hoa.

,.,pc„is:.

^ • i L ^ MeJii

|iq P

arum(quod abipfliMcdu Rtgnum appellitur) Lingua (omniumi.

Verso of half-title page of Linguae Sinarum Mandarinicae Hieroglyphicae Grammatica Duplex

(Coover gift)

"For lola Haverstick My old friend and nicest interviewer, June 14, 1962." The gift also includes a letter from Auchincloss in which he comments on Saul Bellow's Herzog and discusses Henry James's method of composition.

Our Growing Collections 3 9

Hazzard gift. Shirley Hazzard has established a collection of her papers with a gift of approximately two thousand manuscripts, doc­uments, reports, interviews, notes, and other materials pertaining to her research on the United Nations and for her book Countenance of Truth, an examination of the United Nations and Kurt Waldheim.

Jaffin gift. Mr. George M. Jaffin (A.B., 1924; L.L., 1926) has pre­sented two watercolor drawings by Rockwell Kent, "Adam," 1926, and an untitled drawing for the Sears, Roebuck and Company War Bond series, 1942. In addkion, his gift includes Arthur Rackham Christmas cards inscribed by the artist; an autograph letter by Rack-ham to the American art dealer Alwin J. Scheuer (see Columbia Library Columns, November 1991); and a nineteenth-century Ara­bic manuscript of the Koran, decorated in gilt.

Kennedy gift. Ms. Sighle Kennedy (A.M., 1964; Ph.D., 1969) has presented Samuel Beckett's Dream of Fair to Middling Women, Dub­lin, 1992, one of 130 numbered copies specially bound and in a cloth slipcase. This is the first publication of Beckett's first novel, written in Paris in 1932. The book has been designed in an Art Nouveau style appropriate to the period of the text.

Mayer gift. For addition to her father's papers, Meredith Nevins Mayer has presented eighty-one letters, cables, and photographs of Allan Nevins, documenting his life and career between 1912 and 1969. Also included are letters to Mary R. Nevins from Henry Steele Commager, A. L. Rowse, and others, about Nevins. In his undated letter to Peter and Barbara Long, Nevins describes meeting Audrey Vyshinsky, "the basest scoundrel, the most contemptible caitiff in international life," and V. K. Krishna Menon, "whose intellectual distinction was apparent."

Penkowergift. Mr. Monty N. Penkower(A.M., 1964; Ph.D., 1970) has presented to the Libraries material dealing with the Federal Writers' Project and American literary magazines of the late 1930s and early 1940s. The fifteen items include issues of little magazines

40 Rudolph Ellenbogen

Rockwell Kent, untitled drawing for Sears, Roebuck and Company War Bond scries, 1942 (Jaffin gift)

such as the Tramp, with contributions by Witter Bynner, William Saroyan, and others; "Material Gathered on the Federal Writers' Project, San Francisco, As a Sample for a Project of Creative Work," 1936, mimeographed and unpublished, with contributions by Kenneth Rexroth; and mimeographed material relating to social-ethnic studies written by Benjamin A. Botkin, who was the national folklore editor for the Federal Writers' Project.

Roudiez gift. For addition to his papers. Professor Leon S. Roudiez (A.M., 1940; Ph.D., 1950) has added four letters from his col­league Jean Albert Bede regarding the Columbia Dictionary of

Our Growing Collections 41

Modern European Literature, one letter from Albert Camus, seven letters from the French writer Henri Massis regarding the manu­script of his book about the French writer and political theorist Charles Maurras, and one letter from Henri Peyre regarding his contribution to the French Review, which Professor Roudiez edited.

Weil gift. A gift of fourteen books, including thirteen handsomely printed by the Warwick Press, has been presented by Mr. James L. Weil. Among the Warwick books donated, all limited editions issued between 1976, the year of the founding of the press, and 1992, are: volumes of poetry by John Barr, Kenneth Hopkins, and Ron Masse; lectures and an essay on the founding of the press by Carol J. Blinn, the proprietor of the press; and Saint Francis of Assi-si's Canticle of the Sun, one of forty copies bound in vellum, inscribed by Carol J. Blinn to Mr. Weil.

Wilbur gift. Professor Emeritus C. Martin Wilbur (A.M., 1933; Ph.D., 1941) has presented a copy of Reminiscences of a China Buff, 1992, one of thirty copies. This lively and detailed autobiography recounts his childhood in Japan and China, his work at the Field Museum, Chicago, and later at Columbia, as well as his trips to Asia and Europe.

Yerushalmi gift. To his past gifts of Hebrew andJudeo-Persian man­uscripts and rare editions of the Talmud, Professor Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (A.M., 1961; Ph.D., 1966) has presented two tractates from an eighteenth-century edition of the Talmud: Tractate Shabbat, Amsterdam, 1715, and Tractate Yebamot, Amsterdam, 1717; he has also donated an eighteenth-century Yemenite Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic manuscript miscellany of kabbalistic prayers and rituals, calendaric computations, medical writing, and liturgy.

Activities of the Friends

Winter Reception. The exhibition "From Russia to Kiss Me, Kate: The Careers of Sam and Bella Spewack" opened with a Friends reception on Wednesday afternoon, March 10. On view are over two hundred manuscripts, letters, first editions, photographs, mem­orabilia, programs, playbills, and posters depicting their remarkable collaborative achievements in the theater, as well as their activities as individual authors and journalists. Represented in the exhibition are seventeen plays, musicals, and documentary films, including Boy Meets Girl, My Favorite Wife, Weekend at the Waldorf, and their two collaborations with Cole Porter, Kiss Me, Kate and Leave It to Me!. Also on exhibit is a range of items, from the article by Bella in her junior high school magazine entitled "Little Suffragettes Voting," to Sam's lecture to the Phi Beta Kappa Association in 1960 on "The Anatomy of Humour." The exhibition, documented in a handsome catalog, will remain on view in the Kempner Exhibition Room through July 9.

Bancroft Awards Dinner. The Rotunda in Low Memorial Library was the setting for the annual Bancroft Awards Dinner, held on Wednesday evening, April 7, and presided over by Henry F. Graff Chairman of the Friends. University Provost Jonathan R. Cole announced the winners of the 1993 awards for distinguished books in American history and diplomacy published in 1992: Charles Capper, Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life, Volume L The Private Years, published by Oxford University Press; and Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War, published by Stanford University Press. An award of four thousand dollars from funds provided by the Edgar A. and Frederic Bancroft Foundation was presented to the author of each book by the provost, and Mr. Graff presented citations to the publishers.

Future Meetings. The fall exhibition reception will be held on Wednesday afternoon, December 1; the winter exhibition recep­tion will be held on March 2, 1994; and the Bancroft Awards Dinner is scheduled for April 6, 1994.

42

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

RUDOLPH ELLENBOGEN is Assistant Librarian for Rare Books.

W. GREGORY GALLAGHER is the Librarian of the Century Association.

NATHANIEL KNIGHT is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Columbia.

BELLA COHEN SFEUACK collaborated with her husband, Sam Spewack, and with Cole Porter on Kiss Me, Kate.

ISSN 0010-1966

Photography by Martin Messik

43

THE FRIENDS OF THE COLUMBIA LIBRARIES

AN OPPORTUNITY

The Friends assist the Columbia Libraries in several direct ways: first, through their active interest in the institution and its ideals and through promoting public interest in the role of a research library in education; second, through gifts of books, manuscripts, and other useful materials; and third, through financial contributions.

By helping preserve the intellectual accomplishment of the past, we lay the foundation forthe university of the future. This is the primary purpose of the Friends of the Columbia Libraries,

CLASSES OF MEMBERSHIP

Regular: $75" per year Patron; 8 300 per year

Sustaining: $ ! 50 per year Benefactor: $ 500 or more per year

A special membership is available to active or retired Columbia staff member.s at fifty dol­lars per year.

Contributions are income tax deductible.

OFFICERS

HE^^RY GnAVi-: Chairman T PETER KRAUS, Vice-Chairman

DANIEL KING, Secretary-Treasurer

Sixth Floor, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027

THE COUNCIL

R, Dv'KE BENJ.AMIN PEARL LONDON

CARTER BURDEN GEORGE LOVVR\-

ELIZABETH M , CAIN MARTIN MEISEL

T H E VISCOUNTESS ECCLES PAULINE A, PLIMPION

HELMUT N . FRIEDLAENDER DALLAS PRAIT

HENRY GRAFF CAROL Z. Roi HKOPF

loLA S, HAVERSTICK MORRIS H , SAFFRON

CHANTAL HODGES JANET SAINT GERIVIAIN

GEORGE M . JAFFIN STUART B . SCHIMMEL

H U G H J, KELLY M R S FRANZ T, STONE

MARGARET L, KEIMPNER FRANK S, STREETER

T, PETER KRAUS G . THOMAS TANSELLE

CORLISS LAMONT

ELAINE SLOAN, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian, EX-OFFICIO

RUDOLPH ELLENBOGEN, Editor PAIRICK T, LAWLOR, Assistant Editor

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